It was the quietest sound I have ever perceived. It can only have been heard in the pause between sentences, between paragraphs, and not aloud at all. It was a sound between the words of the voice in your head reading these sentences. In order to hear it, you have to both listen and not listen to make a space between the chatter of reading and thinking and to recognize it, fish and water style.
The very faintness of it makes you wonder, "what is making the quietest sound ever heard? Can you be sure it is even sound at all? How do you know you're hearing and not just thinking?"
Thinking. It's often imagined as a single stream of speech or sound. But how can that be? Thoughts do not arise serially, so the voice in your head is editing your thoughts so that other parts of the brain, parts used to language, can respond to it.
Meanwhile the Unspeakable and Unspoken thoughts clamor silently to be expressed. They cry to be realized in articulate speech in the silences between already expressed thoughts.
Dedicated to my friend Dr. Pauline Oliveros. Author's Note: I have tinnitus, a constant tone at about 10,600 Hz, and can't hear silence anymore.
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