Roam & Ramble

I scribble thoughts and capture moments. I also make films for a living. www.migueluis.tv

[miguelthinks]

Just close your eyes. It’ll all be over soon.

[miguelthinks]

Nap time

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skin + wood + light

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Rest

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Sunset splash

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Embrace the grind

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This year, I was every angsty college activist’s favorite t-shirt.

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wait for me

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Chef of the night

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Shades of brown

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Presence

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Youth and wonder

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Sequence of silliness

[miguelthinks]

In Praise of Silence

We tend to place such a high premium on keeping conversations going like a volleyball that must stay up in the air. We scramble for topics and fill silence with so’s and umm’s. When a sentence halts with a deafening period, we panic. We fear dead air so much even if we can find just as much – if not more – meaning in silence.

The measure of one’s relationship isn’t just in the number of words bounced back and forth, but also in the thoughts left unspoken but still understood. It’s in the space between statements that two people learn to fall in sync, to read one another in ways no one else can.

In music, the rests are just as important as notes. Without those gaps, songs are reduced to mechanical spewings of tones – exercises rather than expression. One finds rhythm in the rests. By striking balance between the air and matter, percussionists create patterns people can dance to.

When we fear the void, when we fill it with noise out of unease, we suffocate the connection. We smother communication and keep it from flourishing. What could be a symphony for two becomes a cacophony for none. It’s a march and not a waltz.

We should then embrace the periods and the sighs. The moment a conversation reaches the ellipses, perhaps that’s the time to withhold from words, and instead bridge the gap with a gaze, or the squeeze of the hand, or even nothing at all. And maybe then, in the quiet calm of two people comfortable in each other’s presence, at ease in the absence of speech, one can finally notice that faint sound of two hearts beating as one – morse code for I get you. 

[miguelthinks]

Heart on my sleeve

[miguelthinks]

Find your own patch of warmth

[miguelthinks]

Dusk dwellers