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Thinking Out Loud in a Hermitage

from Words and Silences by Brian Harnetty

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Thinking Out Loud in a Hermitage
Merton Archive Tape 213-07

It’s Monday morning, April 24th. Some ideas about the use of tape, something that just occurred to me. Tape can be used to speak on in such a way that you say nothing and hide everything, or it can be used in such a way that something is revealed. What is the point of using tape in the hermitage so that something is revealed? There’s no point using tape here in such a way that everything is hidden. That is to say simply saying things for the sake of saying them. But what is revealed?

But what should be manifested in thinking out loud in a hermitage, is not simply the mechanical operation of the mind itself, mechanically recorded on another machine -- two machines recording each other -- but a speaking, which will somehow bring to the surface this metaphysical perplexity of man in the presence in his own being, or being in the presence of other beings, in such a way that the unity is manifest of the one and the many.

The purpose of the solitary life is to be totally free and spontaneous and manifesting God with the inmost grain of one’s own being and not to live against the divine grain, so to speak. Hence, the danger of simply speaking as if one knew. And when the tape is moving you have to keep talking and you have to keep saying something and you have to keep pretending that you know something. In which case, you hide the fact that you don’t know. You get away from the perplexity, and perhaps the danger of tape is that it takes you away from the inner mulling over of what is not yet formulated. To let the inner word really grow and develop and expand in you before it is uttered. In other words, the danger of speaking constantly from the top of one’s head instead of from the heart.

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from Words and Silences, released October 7, 2022

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Brian Harnetty Columbus, Ohio

Interdisciplinary artist using sound and listening to foster social change. Recordings on Winesap, Karl, Dust-to-Digital, Atavistic, and Scioto Records.

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