Silence – the Ultimate Form of Expression? — PPC

Pencils and Pop-Culture: Silence – The Ultimate Form Of Expression?

On this blog, we talk about expression – creative expression, expressing yourself, expressive gestures, expressions that have passed from the common vernacular. You name it, and we’ve probably talked about expression.

The flipside, however, is that you can say it best when you say nothing at all. Just ask Allison Krauss. Or Richard Nixon.

It was on this day in 1973 that an eighteen-and-a-half-minute gap was found in the infamous Watergate tapes. No one has ever, with any certainty, determined what was said in those missing minutes – no one has ever even determined how the tapes came to be erased. Secretary Rose Mary Uher claimed that she accidentally erased five minutes of the tapes during the transcription process; Nixon’s legal defense said that the President was ill-versed in the ways of operating the maze of machines and may have accidentally erased them himself.

The Watergate Scandal wasn’t without its contributions to pop culture – for one, everything that may or may not inspire a scandal is referred to as “Something-Gate,” which is a fun-bordering-on-annoying turn of phrase. Try it – someone take your lunch out of the office refrigerator? “Sandwich-Gate.” Get cut off by someone who refused to use their blinker? “Traffic-Gate.” Stylish writing implements disappearing from your desk? Yep, you guessed it – “Pencil-Gate.”

The Blackwing itself plays an ancillary role in the history of the Watergate scandal. Reporters Bob Woodward and Carl Bernstein penned a book about their journalistic adventures in uncovering the scandal, calling it “All the President’s Men.” It was eventually made into an Academy Award-winning film with Dustin Hoffman, Robert Redford and Jason Robards, though I would argue that the real co-stars of film are the Blackwing pencils that appear in many newsroom shots.

Sometimes, silence can be golden. Other times…not so much. But it can be a powerful way to express yourself. Silence communicate everything from joy to grief, pride to disapproval. It can build revolutions and topple leaders, but it can also be the start of new love and new beginnings – think of that moment when you meet someone’s eyes across a room and know that they’re the one for you without ever exchanging a word.

We talk a lot about writing, music, literature, sketching, and art…but sometimes, silence says it better than anything else.

Though Richard Nixon might think otherwise.