December 2024
To all who read and write with me,
Last winter I wrote to you as I passed through landscapes, slowly climbing towards the Alps. I closed with the borrowed words, "the mountains are calling, and I must go. Then I thought the mountains would save me from exhaustion and restore my rhythm of making.
Eight months later, I no longer hear their call. The mountains no longer promise arrival. They are there, and so am I. Their silence surrounds me, not as escape but as an abiding presence. What was once desire has now become the mundane.
In that silence, I found the rhythm I was so searching for in a different way. Somewhere between the valleys and the glaciers, the music fell silent (an image Esmée used in this column, which has stayed with me). At first I tried to find it again, listening intently, waiting for that familiar urge to create. But the mountains, with their imperturbable calm, taught me a different kind of listening. A way that had made John Cage proud: listening without expectation. Not a return to music, but a resonance with silence.
I see landscapes as co-workers, mirrors of curiosity, wonder and space to grow
And yet silence does not mean emptiness. Here even stillness is alive: glaciers whisper their retreat, forests breathe mist, rivers form stone with patience. Many artists have used mountains as settings for human drama, but now that I live here, I see that the sublime lies not in being overwhelmed, but in the dialogue with the landscape. The self does not disappear, it flows with the rivers, bends with the trees, reaches with the peaks. I see landscapes as co-workers, mirrors of curiosity, wonder and space to grow. They are not only places of beauty, but also of rupture and renewal.
I am grateful that BK Information gives us the opportunity to share our stories. They have connected us in many ways. The words of other graduates in this magazine reach me as recognition: the sudden silence when music stops, the weariness of always moving, the endless search for reassuring mantras. I cherish each of your texts.
After my previous post, a reader wrote to me saying that my words had given her the strength to write about her art. Her message stuck because I was in the very process of letting go while she began. It felt as if there were two roads apart: one voice moving forward, and one stopping. But nature showed me that coming apart is not the same as opposites. Rivers split and come together again. Seeds remain still under the ground before unexpectedly sprouting. Beginnings and endings may not be as far apart as we think.
What remains in me is the hunger for thought, for dialogue, for knowledge that stretches across disciplines like a mountain range connecting peaks. I still long for the intensity of studying, immersing myself in texts and conversations where ideas ferment and spark. I will continue to study, not to return to who I was, but to keep moving, to keep asking questions. Because if the mountains have taught me anything, it is that permanence is an illusion. Rocks wear out, glaciers retreat, and forests renew themselves in ways no one can predict. Identity also shifts with the seasons.
So, instead of closing with certainty, I leave a question - as much for myself as for you:
How do moments of "silence" affect you?
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