On Rooms That Hold Many Silences

Anyone who has sat in silence with a room full of other people knows it is not the same as sitting in silence alone, though no instrument could measure the difference.

The silence of a shared room has a texture that solitary silence lacks. It is upheld rather than merely present: each person's stillness is, in part, a gift to everyone else's, and the awareness of this mutual holding changes the quality of the quiet itself.