On Silence, and Other Furnishings

My grandfather, who built boats, used to say that silence was a room you furnished, not a room you entered. This struck me as a strange claim when I was twelve. It strikes me, now, as the most accurate description of silence I have ever been given. A clock, ticking in another room. The soft settle of a house adjusting to its own weight. The breath of someone asleep beside you. The distant, patient complaint of a radiator. The sound of your own attention, which is not quite a sound. Silence, in other words, is almost never silent. It is a particular arrangement of quiet things — a composition, if you like, of withdrawals. A room without any sound at all is not silent. It is deafening, and after a while, unkind. True silence is company. It is the version of company in which nothing is being asked of you. I have been learning, slowly, to furnish silence the way my grandfather furnished it. A chair by the window. A book I am not reading. A lamp that is on for no particular reason. The kettle, cooling. The rooms I like best, now, are the ones that know how to be quiet without becoming empty.