What Frequency?

What Frequency?

What frequency

Is your tinnitus?

Mine casts waves.

Of doorbell chime,

Searing security alarms,

And phones

Pinging and ringing and

Ringing and pinging.

But wait!

Is that sound of

Guitars?

And cicadas on the summer breeze,

Of banter and laughter of those

Passing by.

With a little sigh

I hear

Why fret and worry

About so many things?

Few are needed.

Let them go.

Let them be.

Be.

Simon C.J. Falk  14 January 2023

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The Song Without Sound

The Song Without Sound

This is the third response to the film La famille Belier.  Part of the film includes moments where songs are ‘signed’.  This is an impression of that effect.

 

The Song Without Sound

A third response to the film La famille Belier

 

Can you hear?

It is the sound

Of a song

Without sound.

The sound

Of a song

Sung with hands,

With eyes,

And with embouchure

Of the mouth

Not for sound,

But for sight.

It is a song sung through

Vibration,

Felt,

Pressing

A pulsing hand

On the heart

Of the singer.

Can you hear?

Do you listen

And feel

Its tone?

 

I am the song of silence,

I sign the words this day,

I visually display sentiments,

And show the tune that way.

When you feel the resonance,

Of the song’s apt tones,

You need not have any volume,

For it vibrates in your bones.

 

Simon C.J. Falk     16 January 2016

 

 

‘What If’? – We Looked Closer and Listened Harder

‘What If’? – We Looked Closer and Listened Harder

Today I attended the first half of a day-long workshop by a crowd called ‘WhatIf?’ .  It is a team of two colleagues working in the welfare sector.  They try to develope better empathy skills in as many people as is humanly possible.  It is to aid our family, friends and colleagues who have burdens in their mental health.  It is to help us see the person and not just the pathology.  To ask what if?  And to follow where that question leads us.

‘What If’? – We Looked Closer and Listened Harder

What if?

I looked –

really looked –

closer

at the lines

on the brow,

beyond the tracks

in the eyes,

to the weary

pain within?

What if?

I saw

in the faraway look

not just the shadows

but

a flicker

of stunning strobes

of light

striking

like technicolour

vivid visions?

What if?

I heard

in the gravely voice –

from too many smokes –

the struggle

to

articulate

the dream,

the clawing

for confidence

in that awkward pause

between words,

that is further stifled

by the voices

jibing and gibbering

in

the inner ear?

What if?

I heard

the heaving

behind the hero

in their

great Ulyssian Journey

of one day

in their life?

What if?

In my own

struggles to come

to grips with life,

I see

in others

my brothers

and sisters

together

one

and all

longing

to be seen

for who we really are?

PS:  Thanks to Emily J (and her fab blogspace here)  for pointing out Dr Brene Brown’s TED talk on empathy here

Simon C.J. Falk                      26 March 2015