I just woke up from a dream. I went to a beautiful performance art show. It was amazing! The theater was VERY small and intimate. It sat less than fifty people. The show was QUIET. It was amazingly quiet. Just beautifully quiet. The theater was in the round, so there were no seats any better than others.

The first act started with a pool of water. The performers approached the water and put their feet into it. They made moises with the water that sounded like music. It was absolutely beautiful. It was kind of like STOMP but so silent and quiet that you would miss it if you weren’t paying attention. It was percussive and dance and all the lovely music came from the water.

The second act had a patch of grass in the middle of the theater. They walked on the grass in time to create music. It was so quiet and beautiful. I was amazed that they could get the theater so quiet. It was such a lovely sound of people walking on the grass in the exact time to make music. Even though the music was being created with such different “instruments” you could tell that they were playing the same song on the grass as they had in the water.

The third act involved one woman in the middle of the theater at a huge keyboard, not a musical keyboard, but a computer keyboard. She was typing and we could see what she was writing on the screen. The sound of her typing was a rhythmic tune, so she was creating this inspiring music again, but just with her fingers on a keyboard.

There were intermissions between the acts while they changed the theater. Outside the theater, there were arts and crafts for sale: lots of colored glass hanging from metal curlie-cues. It was the kind of art that makes subtle noises like bamboo windchimes. Somehow, I think all the arts and crafts had to do with the show. Because the theater was so small, they were making their money on the souvenirs instead of the seats.

After I woke up, I realized how difficult it would be to create this performance in real life. Each person allowed into the theater is a noisemaker and we don’t live in a society that rewards the quiet. You would need restrictions for people to even come into the theater: no cell phones, no pagers, no children under the age of 15, no talking, no one with any sort of sickness that would make them sniffle or cough. I think this sort of performance simply couldn’t work in today’s society without strict enforcement and bodyguards to evict people for even the slightest infraction.

The whole idea of this performance is that music is everywhere around us. It is in the drips of water that come off the house and the soft padded steps of the cat across the carpet and in my fingers as I type this entry. Even now, I can feel the music in my fingers as I type this and my clicking is suddenly beautiful instead of a noise that falls into the background. I can hear the hard drive in the computer spinning as a backdrop to my typing and the world is beautiful.

I want this performance art show to exist. There is so much noise in our lives that this almost silent performance was a life-changing experience for me, even if it was only in my mind…