Say something

What can I say about Justin Timberlake? He's highly versatile. He outgrew his boyishness but still retains enough to appeal to all sectors of his audience. Say Something features country star Chris Stapelton as well. In this song, he reminds me a little of Willie Nelson during his solo, as he's not always singing on time, just a little behind the beat. Collaborations seem to have the effect of maintaining and broadening an artist's appeal. It's usually a smart thing to do. 

I want to talk about the song. The video is neat, too, and it's a somewhat unique idea. It starts out in the basement and follows JT through the building in a single take, building in intensity as it goes.

There are a lot of possible interpretations for the song. I'll just talk about what it means to me. 

Our world is full of noise. I'm currently reading the biography of author and lyricist Margaret Wise Brown, and even though she lived many years ago, she lamented the noise that was creeping into our lives. The radio and television were the biggest offenders at the time. It used to be music was accessible to everyone, and everyone sang and made up songs in their families or communities. As the noise crept in, the need to create music for the average man and woman died out. They just turned on the radio if they wanted to hear music. But silence is a precursor to the creation of music. It comes out of nothing. Without silence, there can be no music. 

Here's the thing. Our brains need silence. Not always. But we need some silence. It's stimulating, in fact. There's an article I just read about this very thing, how the brain actually creates neurons in silence. The article is here. When the whole world is clamoring for our attention, can we escape for a while and repair? We've made the world truly inescapable with our attachment to devices. It's not unheard of to have multiple conversations going at once on our devices, to become confused and to say the wrong thing to the wrong person, to have the television on at the same time, to text and drive or have the kids talking while we do our hands-free communicating on the way to the store or whatever. It's too much noise for me.

I'm one to talk. I have spent my whole life cramming noise into my life. At some point, I realized I needed silence or at least some relative quiet. I'm not saying I need to live the life of a monk, but I do need moments of relative quiet so my mind can unravel. Otherwise, I'll get to bed and everything I didn't tend to during the day will unravel at once, and I'll be unable to sleep. My time in prayer works double duty, allowing me to put things at God's feet and to also process things through my mind and rid myself of them. It's a giving away of things I can't control. It's healthy for me. 

As an introvert, I need silence. It's my power. It's when I recharge. It's when I come up with solutions I wouldn't have seen otherwise. It's when I create and expand and dream and hope and cry if I need to. If I spend too much time in silence, however, I start to suffer. There needs to be balance. 

Timberlake's song also speaks of the silence that's necessary in relationships. There is a power in not saying anything — when you both arrive home and you're spent, when you just want to collapse but you have to drag yourself through a few more hours before you can crawl into bed. You hold each other for a moment in complete silence, and you say more in that silence than you could ever say with words. There is a power in silence, and our culture overlooks it. 

Sometimes everything one could say has already been said. Or it doesn't need to be said. Words have power, but so does silence. As I sit here (in silence) as the snow comes down, it's something to contemplate. I don't want to live my whole life with this much silence, but it's been a necessary component of my healing, as the silence has allowed things to surface and heal that wouldn't have otherwise. So today I'm thankful for the peace and quiet.