Nothing to say

Somewhere along the way, I decided I have nothing to say. This happened gradually, imperceptibly, much like aging happens. Rather than stem from insecurity, this conviction came from a growing sense of comfort with who I was. Not as “self-love,” a term most often used by people who persistently fail to reach that comfort, but a humbling awareness of self, acquired painfully for the most part.

To have nothing to say is liberating. For one, you immediately notice that everyone around you has yet to reach that conclusion. Our systems of connection are on the whole projectile and have conditioned us to forget that we have the option to keep quiet. Like Lotus Eaters, we have succumbed to numbing feeds populated mostly by ego and we mindlessly consume the fruits of our narcissism.

The regrettable consequence of this practice is not, as many oblivious to their own contributions might lament, an overflow of subpar content. Quality rests with the tastes of the beholder and I am generally of the opinion that unless it kills you, more is more. What has been lost is a quality that never came easy to us to begin with, and that is our ability to receive. To receive, as Steinbeck put it, “anything from anyone, to receive gracefully and thankfully, and to make the gift seem very fine.”

Recipience has been diminished everywhere in our culture, worst of all in art, which to be considered art at all must fulfill its duty to receive us generously, and where successful, create more space within us for reception. By reception I do not mean acceptance. I mean an anticipation of our humanity, in its totality, from misery to glory. This quality is inherent to all the works we have commonly accepted as “great,” be they plays or novels or paintings or film. But instead of extending an invitation to their audiences, contemporary artists are more and more inclined to abuse them. I have found myself trapped in performances that attempted to rehabilitate me in ways similar to those in “A Clockwork Orange.” Any discomfort I felt did not arise from a sudden recognition of the failings I was instructed to acknowledge within me, but from the stiffness of theater seats I had to endure for indefensibly indulgent runtimes. It occurred to me that I was being treated exactly as I was on social media: like an invisible, inconsequential void, the dark depths of which could only be reached by the loudest projection of opinion. Artists seemed to forget that I was not there as a passive voyeur but as a human being sharing time, oxygen, and a sacred silence with other human beings. It is the silence of amphitheaters and libraries and cathedrals, of the seconds between the last note played at a concert and the eruption of applause, a silence that enters us all simultaneously like communion and within which a unity grows.

Shared silences can also exist in isolation, between a writer and a reader, a musician and a listener, a filmmaker and a viewer, whenever, that is, there is a fusion of conscience. But they cannot exist in social media, however big the crowds there are. A fusion presupposes some sort of pause and by design such spaces are meant to eliminate pausing. For them to be successful they must maximize views within the minimum number of seconds. We are encouraged to either claim our space in them by projecting aggressively, or to continuously dismiss what we are being offered with a swift swipe. We cannot truly share silence in any part of them. In fact, no matter which side we belong to, projector or consumer, we are being rendered more resistant to reception.

It wouldn’t matter as much had it not influenced our real-life behaviors. We use blanket terms to describe our symptoms: diminishing attention spans, performative narcissism, superficial communication, reduced empathy, increased loneliness, instant gratification, outrage culture, and so on. But what it all comes down to is this. We have forgotten what it is really like to receive: news, phone calls, telegrams, good-mornings and farewells, the change the grocer left on the counter, insults, jokes, gifts. True acts of generosity carry in them an earnest invitation. They are not charitable, rather, they manage to make us feel that we have something of value to offer.

I think ultimately that is also what makes Substack so great, that this is the reason all of us who are here, use it and love it, perceive it as different from other digital spaces. I have seen this ineffable quality described in different ways—in one day alone, as “patience,” as “a new type of online engagement,” as “a wholesome and inviting place,” as “I much prefer the shit I post here. Idk I love y’all or something,” or “you know how I am the official spokesperson for Substack (unofficial)”—but what we are all feeling is that at its heart this platform is designed to breed reception and it will only succeed if it finds ways to optimize it. To start a Substack is to receive people into a space created by your consciousness, and this invitation remains alive in every post. To subscribe, is to become an active recipient. Even the Notes feed, if it is to serve our financial interests, must receive us thoughtfully. It must respect our attention, make us pause and make us think, it must invite us to stop scrolling. I think there is a participation of conscience happening here, the only version of a shared silence that I’ve encountered in the digital world. And silence can help us better understand what it is that we are being handed. Appreciate it, in some cases, better than the givers do.

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