Arvo Pärt Centre Residency: Part 1
APC Residency Diary - Part 1
It’s my third day here at the Arvo Pärt Centre in Laulasmaa, Estonia. When I applied for the residency I wrote I was longing for silence and here I have found it in many shades. Today in the morning Arvo Pärt told me I should go into the chapel, the light is beautiful, so I did what he said and was hit by saturated silence of a quality that I have physically never experienced before. I looked at the light, but was tempted to close my eyes and immediately fell into a meditative state, just listening to the ringing in my ears.
As a child I found out my thoughts would stop when I put my head underwater, I would play games with myself in the ocean by thinking a thought above water and quickly diving under - the thought would vanish as soon as my head was submerged, I did it over and over again, it gave me great joy. It took me a few years to realize that it wasn’t the water that was dissolving my thoughts, the key were my ears.
I started meditating when I was 15, at first I had difficulties until I found a trick that had worked from the first second until today: listening. When I listen my thoughts stop, when I listen I can only be present, without judgement. When I listen it feels like my whole being is a vessel that is flooded with whatever surrounds me.
A few years ago I found Kriya yoga, a complex mediation technique that had changed my life, part of it is listening to the sound when you close your ears with your fingers. Entering the chapel here has the same effect, just that it’s the concrete walls that shield the ears from any sound. I don’t know how long I stayed inside, when doing Kriya sometimes I stayed in meditation for more than two hours and thought it had only been twenty minutes.
But it’s not only the chapel that holds silence, it’s the whole building. Everyone has left today and I am alone, sitting in my beautiful room, looking out into the forest and my ears are buzzing.
I came here to empty myself in order to be filled again. Sound comes from silence.
