Counting birds

How long will we keep going? 

Maybe we all don’t know the answer to this. And what does keeping going look like now anyway? It’s a question which takes on poetic significance in a new film from Iceland about the global pause, or Apausalpse.

The word pause is an intervention, a silence daunting and yet alluring.

Feeling comfortable with silence in a conversation or an artwork can be as simple as feeling confident within yourself. Nervous people often fill conversational space with laughter. Nervous artists keep slapping on the paint, filling the frame until they don’t know when the work is finished. 

Yet introducing a pause allows time for reflection. A pause creates tension which builds excitement in the waiting and curiosity in the viewer.

I didn’t realise the power of the pause until I introduced it midway into my Dare to Create course in order to give students time to catch up, but also time for reflection.

Then I discovered there are so many ways this is utilized in the arts, like the kireji or cutting word used in Japanese haiku. Or the negative space in an artwork.

Who would have thought that empty airports, musicians playing without an audience in their living rooms and the quiet of the city’s busiest streets would be the source of new art.

Now we are coming to readdress our own relationship with silence and stillness in what has been termed the great global Apausalpse.

This new film from Iceland called Apausalypse looks at this global pause from an artistic point of view. You can watch here. Language warning: swearing is more potent in subtitles. https://emergencemagazine.org/film/apausalypse/

I think too about the opposite of silence - of busy-ness, noise and chatter. Lately I’ve taken to counting birds, in the sky, in the garden. Listening to the sound of them in the trees, hidden yet present. They symbolise the freedom of flight, the raucous antidote to silence – and yet their very presence connects them to all that is going on in the world.

Next door in the tree I call the Avian Hideaway Motel, the birds continue with their daily activities, eating, preening, mating, swooping and generally racketing about. They bring joy and movement amidst the great Apausylpse. I welcome them into my life.