“Whoever screams, loses” is one of those folk sayings that sometimes even passes for wisdom. Well, if someone in a discussion round, or simply in a conversation, decides to raise their voice, that counts as screaming.
The scream for attention, or to drown out the other side.
So far, so loud.
A long time ago I decided to slip a “b” into “scream.”
Now I devote myself to scribing. Full stop.
“And Suddenly There Was Silence”
Screaming does have a legitimate purpose in spreading a message. But silence is often far more powerful than screaming could ever be.
I experienced a moment of weighty, powerful silence on March 24, 2018.
The movement “Enough is Enough” called for protests across the US, after yet another school shooting, this time in Parkland, Florida, took seventeen lives.
Emma Gonzalez was one of the survivors.
She stood before thousands of people and read out the names of the victims.
Then Emma fell silent.
The silence grew more and more powerful, more intense.
At first there were shouts from the crowd, but then the silence took the wheel.
A picture instead of a claim: “You could hear breathing, rustling, somewhere a sob. Nothing else. Six minutes long.”
Emma’s entire appearance lasted exactly six minutes and twenty seconds. That was the span of time it took the gunman to extinguish seventeen lives.
“Munch Knew It”
Edvard Munch, the painter, placed the scream on an equally powerful pedestal of art. His painting “The Scream” shows a man with his mouth wide open, hands pressed to his ears. I always thought this person was screaming into nature. But apparently the scream came from nature itself, for a man who has to endure it.
Given today’s view of the state of nature — of our shared environment — Munch’s scream takes on even more meaning.
Is there a hit parade for the scream? I wouldn’t know. So I built myself one.
The scream for love sounds more desperate than aggressive.
Anyone who has ever had love withdrawn from them knows the screaming aftermath.
The scream for attention is a bit louder, and comes out somewhat aggressively.
If nobody’s listening, it has to get loud.
Or so the folk wisdom goes.
That may hold true at the start, but whoever screams too much at an audience, loses. People don’t like being hollered at constantly.
That’s not folk wisdom talking — that’s mine.
The scream for justice and against injustice comes with baggage.
Civic courage and personal bravery are part of standing up for more justice.
However lightly that reads on the page, the risk to those standing upright is not small, when autocrats and dictators are at the levers of power.
They can’t stand this particular kind of screaming.
The scream for air doesn’t make for better breathing, but it does make for a better mood. When the inner pressure gets too big, too strong, the body — and the person attached to it — wants to shed the excess with a scream.
Men know this especially well, the ones who go scream alone into the forest while simultaneously wondering whether they’re still not right.
“The scream I understand — at least when it comes from despair.”
Especially those who scream out of despair.
What I can’t stand, on the other hand, are the loudmouths in discussions. Whoever has to drown out their opponent with volume instead of arguments already looks suspicious to me. It gets even worse when TV debates have both sides hollering away, and the viewer — again, meaning me — can’t understand a single word.
Neither in English nor in German.
How do Canadians make themselves noticed?
Often with a deployed euphemism. “That’s interesting” stands for “That’s impossible.” “Not bad” is pure enthusiasm. But “Could be better” is code red.
“Sorry” is less a request for forgiveness than an exclamation mark with manners.
Canadians let off steam by writing a letter to the editor of the local paper — politely, and with their full name attached.
How do the Swiss make themselves loudly known?
They yodel.
No, they don’t. Or only a few of them do. But Swiss reticence about loudness isn’t a genetic defect — it stems more from a basic attitude.
The Swiss man and woman tend to favour the grumble instead.
The motto, therefore, is “Wilhelm Tell It To The People,” not “Yell It To The People.”
