At the end of the film Dong-Ho and Song-Hwa went separate ways, without ever mentioning the fact that they had found each other. It is as if telling, that there are certain things need not be said and should not be said, even though carrying these unspoken words could be a great burden.
Mia Don’t you hate that? Vincent What? Mia Uncomfortable silences. Why do we feel it’s necessary to yak about bullshit in order to be comfortable? Vincent I don’t know. That’s a good question. Mia That’s when you know you’ve found somebody special. When you can just shut the fuck up for a minute and comfortably enjoy the silence.
S.R. One of the many things that a reader can unexpectedly learn from your work is to appreciate silence. You write about the freedom it makes possible, its multiple causes and meanings. For instance, you say in your last book that there is not one but many silences. Would it be correct to infer that there is a strongly autobiographical element in this?
FOUCAULT I think that any child who has been educated in a Catholic milieu just before or during the Second World War had the experience that there were many different ways of speaking as well as many forms of silence. There were some kinds of silence which implied very sharp hostility and others which meant deep friendship, emotional admiration, even love. I remember very well that when I met the filmmaker Daniel Schmidt who visited me, I don’t know for what purposes, we discovered after a few minutes that we really had nothing to say to each other. So we stayed together from about three o’clock in the afternoon to midnight. We drank, we smoked hash, we had dinner. And I don’t think we spoke more than twenty minutes during those ten hours. From that moment a rather long friendship started. It was for me the first time that a friendship originated in strictly silent behavior.
Maybe another feature of this appreciation of silence is related to the obligation of speaking. I lived as a child in a petit bourgeois, provincial milieu in France and the obligation of speaking, of making conversations with visitors, was for me something both very strange and very boring. I often wondered why people had to speak. Silence may be a much more interesting way of having a relationship with people.
S.R. There is in North-American Indian culture a much greater appreciation of silence than in English-speaking societies and I suppose in French-speaking societies as well.
FOUCAULT Yes, you see, I think silence is one of those things that has unfortunately been dropped from our culture. We don’t have a culture of silence; we don’t have a culture of suicide either. The Japanese do, I think. Young Romans or young Greeks were taught to keep silent in very different ways according to the people with whom they were interacting. Silence was then a specific form of experiencing a relationship with others. This is something that I believe is really worthwhile cultivating. I’m in favor of developing silence as a culture ethos.
- Michel Foucault, An interview by Stephan Riggins, Ethos, 1983
幾年前 Robert Wilson 的戲 The Black Rider 在落城巡演的時候,犯懶一直沒去,等再想起的時候,已經結束了。
初時不仔細地聽,唯一首 Russian Dance 的旋律讓人著迷,其余只覺得噪音。可是這張碟跟了我很久,是鐘愛 Robert Wilson 的插畫吧。好長一段時間上班時候只聽 Waits,所有 Island 及其後的專輯一道放在 iTune 的列表裡。不知不覺,好像哪一天忽然發現被整張碟的音樂浸透了似的,每一個樂符都像真空包裝的塑料膜一樣貼緊皮膚。然後才仔細去看歌詞,才知道他和 Robert Wilson 的這一齣戲。
二月裡在印加古道上露營的第三天整天都是下山路,天開始下一點雨,讓我想起《天遣》的開始。翻覆地聽那首只有一分鐘長的 Flash Pan Hunter/Intro,聽了大約上百遍吧,一千多級石階,渾身遮在篷裘裡還是被像雪花一樣飄來的雲水浸得透濕。
這幾天在想,我看電影,is sort of in search of a soul — in search of that of my own, and of an understanding of the humanity of humans, in which case, is that of the others’. But sometimes it gives you a spark, and that spark may push you to think and to remember, and may enhance your senses without distorting your perceptions.
這些天很辛苦的工作,爭取上半年工作 600 小時。600 小時相當於十五周的全日制,不到四個月的工作量,雖然很少,但是整個上半年度掉兩個多月的長假,制了十幾幅新版印出近百張,也算收獲頗豐。像哪個電影裡說的,I find the key is to think of a day as units of time, each unit consisting of no more than thirty minutes. Full hours can be a little bit intimidating and most activities take about half an hour。