They are in their eighties now. They were young in the 1950s. They were silent then because they were too young to fight in the war and as a result they missed out on the creative bustle of the 1940s.They were young in the 1950s but nothing happened then worth getting excited about. They enjoyed being young silently. Those who survived until now are either quarantining silently or in hospitals dying silently. The big difference is that now everyone else of all ages everywhere in the world is also silent. Nothing is happening because nothing can happen. The coronavirus won’t allow it to happen. It is shutting us all up. We have all become suddenly silent like the silent generation which is still silent waiting for the death that is hitting it harder than other people of other generations because its survivors are in their eighties.Silence is not golden. Silence is the first cousin of loneliness which is silence with an ache added. Dark bitter aching loneliness, as Thomas Wolfe wrote, that knows “the roots of silence in the night”.
No comments:
Post a Comment