Music, then books, then nothing

Four hours up to Montreal, and four hours back. Alone both ways.

I hadn't planned how I would spend it, and looking back, the order it fell into is the part worth thinking about.

First, music. I got in, put something on and pulled out. No thought went into that at all.

Then audiobooks. Against the Machine by Paul Kingsnorth, and the start of Time and How to Spend It by James Wallman. Four and a half hours across the two legs. Both were good, and both left me with more than I had started with.

Then silence. In stretches, and probably two and a half hours of it in total.

What was interesting was what the silence turned out to be for.

It was not rest and it was not empty. It was where the book content got processed. Sorting through what I had heard and testing it against my own life: what applies, what doesn't, what I have been avoiding, and what I had already half-decided and now had words and categories for.

I don't think I would have got any of that from the books on their own. The listening gave me the input and the silence is where it turned into something.

Which points at an imbalance I hadn't noticed before.

Input is the easy part, and it gets easier every year. I can have more of it than I could ever use, on any subject, and most of it, when selected well, is good. What I almost never have is the hour afterwards with nothing in it. More input arrives instead, and the gap where the last lot would have been processed never comes.

I got two hours of that gap this weekend, but not by choosing it. I'd guess I got it as a by-product of being strapped into a seat, on a road, with nowhere to go and nothing else available.