mOOD

TimE and silEncE

Sharmila Bertin

“I need time and silence (…). I need to have space inside me, and I prefer the feeling of creative energy rather than receiving energy”. For me, Juliette Binoche has just summed up, in a simple sentence, using ever-so simple words, what I’ve felt since childhood any time I write. The French actress, hailed with a host of awards, explains with her soft voice on France Inter radio – yes, I know, I’m still listening and I don’t intend to change my habit in 2022! – the reason why she hardly ever goes to the cinema and hardly ever watches TV series. I must admit I’m the same but not for the same reasons: I loathe being locked up in a dark room full of people and I can’t stand the programmes broadcast on the little screen. Anyway, my relationship with the TV has nothing to do with this piece, so let’s go back to what Juliette Binoche discloses. Time and silence. There’s something for all tastes in the different ways of working that exist, and even more so since the covid pandemic shook up, be it sometimes laboriously, the traditional commutework-sleep ritual and invited part of the active population to discover the home-office. It goes without saying that our cohabitation with the virus and its variant pals have made us take a fresh look at a well-established, maybe even a tad dusty-fusty (no offense to the grumps out there) mechanism. Basically, some people adore working to music or with the TV switched on, halflistening, others on a corner of a table in a crowded café (hey, hi there all you students in Starbucks) or even in a supernoisy open space. Loads of people need to communicate with their colleagues, exchange professional ideas and even just talk about their holidays. For me though, it’s time and silence.

If I don’t have these two parameters, I don’t function well. Like Juliette Binoche, they help me, at my little level of course, create space, clear my mind to be able to focus on my feelings, let the tales I wish to tell develop. To clean up my mind and reconnect with my gut, because it’s there that everything that drives me to write is triggered, I need to free up the spaces in my brain that are cluttered, distance myself from thoughts that occasionally disrupt my creative process (this includes unpaid bills that have the gift of possessing tetanising virtues). This mental clean-up mechanism works in mysterious ways, all as illogical as the others, like watching videos about plants or nail varnish on Instagram (I warned you it was going to get strange...), or immersing myself in a detective novel or listening to a radio show (on France Inter, of course) and, in times of great despair, taking a roasting-hot shower even in the middle of the afternoon. And, all this, in total silence, because even the tiniest noise rattles me, makes me lose my concentration, wipes out my inner chain of thought. And, nothing could be more dramatic as far as I’m concerned than an idea that you can’t grasp hold of anymore, nothing could be more infuriating than the beginning of a sentence that will never find its end.