Winter Park -1994
silience
n. the kind of unnoticed excellence that carries on around you every day, unremarkably—the hidden talents of friends and coworkers, the fleeting solos of subway buskers, the slapdash eloquence of anonymous users, the unseen portfolios of aspiring artists—which would be renowned as masterpieces if only they’d been appraised by the cartel of popular taste, who assume that brilliance is a rare and precious quality, accidentally overlooking buried jewels that may not be flawless but are still somehow perfect.
–The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows
I came across the word above. silience, while browsing through a site I’ve mentioned here a number of times in the past, The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows. It reminded me of the many bits of serendipity that brought me to the life and career I have been so fortunate to have and how lucky I have been in encountering people who didn’t just walk by without noticing my work.
It makes me feel grateful, indeed. It also makes me feel somewhat guilty for my good fortune when I know with absolute certainty that there are equally talented people out there whose work and abilities has gone unnoticed. I often see or hear the work of folks who have yet to find an audience and wonder how this could be. I find myself rooting for them, wanting them to continue to do whatever they do so that their work might someday find its way into a situation that will shine a light on it.
It also makes me somewhat guilty for the time that I have wasted, for the bits of hubris I have displayed at times when mistaking the serendipity I have encountered for some sort of entitlement.
Its a needed reminder that any notice my future work receives must be earned anew and that I must take notice of and encourage the talents of others.
On the The Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows site, I noticed there is an actual book coming out in November from the person behind the whole shebang, John Koenig. Looks like something I will look into. But while there I also noticed that they have a YouTube video channel that features visual representations of the definitions contained in the dictionary. Quite well done and effective.
Here’s the video for silience:
Redtree Times 