Maybe Silence

Peggy Nelson

Photo credit: Peggy Nelson

It's not traffic, and it's too late in the morning for the birds, and there's some weather although it's not too windy.

Maybe it’s the low hum of the various generators: refrigerator, electricity, water pumps, building elevator. All those systems that must function perpetually and perpetually well for indoor civilization to flourish.

Maybe the first thing I hear is nothing; although, nothing as something.

The somethings that are only noticed in the breach: a power outage, a shortage of some kind.

Maybe we should spare a thought to invisibilities and almost-silences. We float atop these systems and think of other things,

They have things to say, and they are saying them. Perhaps we are not so much floating atop as embedded within; composed, even.

What are these, and who are we, these invisible and unheard connections, that we only really notice when they stop?

 Peggy Nelson is a new media artist, designer and writer whose work involves fractured narratives in film, sound, social media, and objects. Her most recent project is a series of Historical PSA posters to fight COVID-19. @otolythe