Can We Please Be Quiet, Please?

Maria Abramović, The Artist Is Present, MoMA 2010

What would it be like to silence (just a little) our cultural obsession with talk?

In an age when we’re consistently encouraged to express ourselves and say what we think and engage in conversation (online and in real life), maybe it’s time to talk less.

My mother’s mysterious illness

My mother’s illness didn’t start the March afternoon she called me, but that phone call is the clear before-the-illness-started and after-the-illness-started point. I’d finished seeing clients for the day and was doing something in the closet (decluttering? ordering? searching for something?) when the phone rang.

“I don’t remember how to get on a plane,” she said. There wasn’t panic in her voice, just profound confusion. “I can’t remember how to get on a plane.”

She was supposed to go to London with my sister and niece the following day.

I talked her through it. You’ll arrive at the airport, get out of the car, walk into the terminal with your rolling suitcase, stand in line, go to the kiosk, hand the person your passport, get a boarding pass, go through security, and wait at the gate until it’s time to board the plane.

“Right,” she said. “I really couldn’t remember.”

She went to London, and it turned out as badly as you might expect. Whatever was happening with her memory escalated probably because of the time change and being in a strange place. The last day of their trip she collapsed and then could barely walk. My sister got her on the plane home and when they landed in Chicago, took her straight to the emergency room.

That resulted in a seven-day hospital stay that also turned out as badly as you might expect. She was subjected to two days in a room with no windows which only disoriented her more, and a battery of tests and doses of Ativan that did the same.

She was diagnosed with small seizures in her brain. We were told she’d need 24/7 care.

Once she was discharged and off the Ativan and home in a familiar place, she got better—a lot better. A small miracle. Or so we thought.

The memory loss comes and goes. A few days ago, someone found her standing outside her apartment building waiting to go to lunch with friends. It was 5:30 pm. We still don’t really know what’s wrong or what’s causing the seizures, but she had a hematoma and brain surgery last May. That could have something to do with it. We don’t know if it will get better or worse.

My mother—all five-foot-six of her with curly dark hair—is a dynamo and brilliant and one of those people everyone loves. She always has something fascinating to say. She pulls you out of yourself and listens as if what you’re saying is utterly fascinating too.

What’s most striking about her illness is the aphasia, the way she sometimes loses words, searches for them, and then gives up. It results in long silences between us that I’m not used to.

Yesterday, we went for a walk around the block—which is about as much as she can do right now. It rained slightly. I held a giant umbrella above us. She held onto my arm.

We noticed the white tulips and pink flowers we didn’t know the name of. Some would have called it small talk except it wasn’t small.

We didn’t speak for long stretches, which was awkward. It also made me more aware of her next to me, holding onto me.

Our cultural obsession with talk

There’s a reason

Charles Duhigg

’s latest book Supercommunicators: How to Unlock the Secret Language of Connection is a bestseller. (Even

Susan Cain

spotlighted Duhigg’s book.) The book promises that we all can (and should) be “supercommunicators”—the kind of person everyone loves to talk to because we make them feel good and heard.

Supercommunicators will be of use (I think) to people who struggle with conversation either as a result of anxiety, self-doubt, trauma, or whatever might be holding them back. They’ll learn not to ask about facts lest it lead to a “dead end;” instead, ask about emotions. Not What do you do? but What do you like about your job?

But the book takes a mercenary view of conversation. Conversations should be “good” and meaningful. They should help us get ahead in life. “Every conversation is a negotiation,” he writes without irony. If nothing else, conversations should ingratiate us with others.

In Duhigg’s world, silence is the enemy. It’s awkward and inopportune.

I used to think this way too. Every year, I teach a course called The Art of Conversation. The premise is that conversation serves as the basis for human interaction and connection. If language makes us human, then “talk” or conversation defines us. When taken broadly, conversation determines many societal norms, including social hierarchies and inequalities.

My students are all Gen Z’s and have been accused of being conversationally inept more times than they can count, so transfixed are they on their cellphones and snapchats. But if you were to sit in on a class, you’d find twenty-five supposedly communication-challenged youth not on their phones, talking to me and each other.

They may not be supercommunicators, but they do one thing right, something Duhigg never mentions: They’re honest and genuine. They don’t see the conversation as an opportunity to achieve something.

Because, as NPR talk show host Celeste Headlee puts it, you don’t have to “practice listening” if you are actually listening. By the same token, you don’t have to “show curiosity” if you are, in fact, curious about the person.

The popularity of Duhigg’s book and teaching my course this spring made me think about our cultural obsession with talk. Those and my mother’s mysterious illness.

Supersilence

The walk around the block with my mother and the days I’ve spent with her—watching, waiting, as she searched for a word, seemed to find it, and then let go—made me think about The Artist is Present.

The Artist is Present is a performance piece by the great Serbian performance artist Marina Abramović. It took place during her 2010 retrospective at the MoMA. For three months (three months!) Abramović sat motionless in a chair for eight hours (eight hours!). (A pee cup was built into the chair.)

Abramović is often referred to as the mother of performance art (or grandmother, depending on the age of the person making the reference). Less and Less of More and More is inspired by her. (More on that next month.)

Performance art is something most people dismiss, don’t understand, or feel excluded by. They don’t see the point. I love performance art because the point isn’t the point. The point is the experience. I actually dated a performance artist for a year in my thirties back when I was still a poet. Performance artist and poet: the financial potential was endless.

In the chair across from her, people took turns looking into her eyes without speaking. Some were so moved they cried. It became so popular that people camped out outside the museum to get a chance to sit with her in silence. It became cultish with people saying they had spiritual awakenings.

Maria Abramović, The Artist Is Present, MoMA 2010

In 2010, I no longer lived in New York but was there visiting with my mother. We went to the MoMA with said ex-boyfriend—the performance artist—and his wife and child to see The Artist is Present.

(I often took my mother to experimental theater and performance art shows. One was at the Wooster Group, the once theatrical home of Willem Defoe and Spalding Gray, among many others—many close friends of mine when I lived there. “La Didone” was half in Italian and utterly bizarre. At the intermission, my mother turned to me and said, “Are we staying?”)

We walked through Abramović’s retrospective and entered the second floor of the atrium. Below was Abramović in a high-collard full-length red dress.

At the time, I knew little about her. I didn’t sit across from her that day.

From above, all I saw was a woman in a red dress sitting in a chair and someone else sitting across from her and a table between them. I don’t remember what the other person looked like.

Maria Abramović, The Artist Is Present, MoMA 2010

What struck me was the crowd of people surrounding them. People sat and stood entranced—for hours, sometimes all day. Entranced by two people sitting without talking.

So why do we give talk such power while silence is seen as something to avoid in conversation? Why do we make people feel like they should be “good” at it, do it more, and get something out of it?

In Abramović’s world, silence is transcendent.

Duhigg’s right that silences aren’t natural in conversation. They’re the stuff of great art, something to strive for.

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Marina Abramović’s An Artist’s Life Manifesto