This is one meaningfull conversation I shared with a cloud of friends. Its starting point happened when I asked Jaime, one of my closest friends, his opinion of the contemporary man’s architectural project, the one we were doing for Andrea Branzi.

I cannot talk about Jaime without doing a brief intro of him (because I really admire him), Jaimito Avila was my classmate at school, he’s the smartest person I have ever know, he’s 25, and he teaches Spanish literature at La Sorbonne. I could write more about his tangible successes, but for me, the best way to describe him is by saying that he is an artist. Artists are the hardest human the most beautiful beings to find in the world. I can say they see the world with different eyes. It’s a way of living, according to me.

The first thing he metioned was the importance of understanding the difference between Silence and Mute. To explain this metaphor, he used the example of writing. Nothing is the white part of the page, the first letter of a word a sound. This means, if Nothing doesn’t exist, the sounds cannot exist. This is what the Spanish poet Jaime Siles, called La Nada Sonora.

That day, during my skype conversation I had with Jaime, was next to me a person who I also consider an artist, my cloud-friend Beba Urruela. While she listened to the conversation, I knew her head was working  in the same line as mine, but interpreting the Silence metaphor in her own way. She surprised me when she expressed this: As a musician, she thinks the silence can be more important than the lyrics themselves. At that moment, she was recording a song, called ‘on & off’.

So, considering the importance of the silence and projecting herself in a stage with a contemporary audience listening to this song, she expresses the beauty of the feeling of those seconds when there’s absolutely nothing, and just the audience waiting for the next sound.

Today, when I play the song, I’m actually anxious of listening to this dramatic effect at minute 2:09, when I can actually feel the Silence in the song, and remember what she felt when she did it. Isn’t this a beautiful communication?

Jaimito explained a more symbolic interpretation of the silence, a stronger interpretation, but all connected at the same time. In his poem ‘Musica de Agua’ Jaime Siles reaches a level of abstraction quite strong, that he realized he wasn’t communicating enough. His reader might understand his poem in a hundred years, but not now. Unstead of achieving Silence he remained mute.

Silence communicates while Mute doesn’t.

But, is Mute bad?

Not exactly. A lot of great artists achieved a connection with their audience, years after the art piece was made. We say they were ahead of their era; they are great because they overcame Time.

So, which one is better? Silence or Mute?

According to Anne-Sophie, it’s definitely Silence. She explains it as simple as this: Silence equals Now, and Now is more important than tomorrow. If you do the best NOW, you are choosing the best direction of the present, therefore the best entrance to the future.

For me, Silence is the highest and most beautiful level of simplicity. But in order to achieve this, you have to overcome the highest level of complexity. The hardest part is to know when to stop this complexity, so you can reach your audience in your own time.

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