Nevertheless, Crab has a good ear. He is not the type to confuse the heavy, imposing silence emanating from a dead elephant with the unique vibration of the air that indicates the presence of a silent bird in the surrounding greenery. And Crab could even tell you the name of the bird.
His long practice of solitary meditation has taught him, if nothing else, to distinguish the many forms of silence, which meet with only an unchanging and obtuse insensitivity in the untrained ear. There is, then - among others - a string silence, a wind silence, a percussion silence, no more alike than the instruments thus classified, but on occasion their sonorities meld into a symphonic silence in which slow, stately movements, or martial ones, alternate with sprightly little phrases and silky arabesques, playing on a variety of motifs and rhythms in order to fully express the complexity of the situation whatever that situation may be.
(Nor does Crab forget the variety of silence derived from flour or soot.)
Judging by the particular grain of a given silence, or the unique crystalline nature of another, he can immediately and infallibly predict by what or by whom it will finally be broken. Gauging their weight, their density, their depth or thickness, allowing for the area and the nature of the terrain they cover, Crab calculates with astonishing precision the duration of these silences, down to the second. Thus forewarned, he can flee and take shelter somewhere else well before the noise erupts, gliding from place to place, already off again as soon as he has arrived, unable to maintain the silence and utterly powerless to impose it; indeed - just as the darkness produced by the eyelids is impotent against a lighthouse and a double row of streetlights - between wax and cotton, you might as well plug your ears with two hornets.
[The Crab Nebula, Chevillard, E.]
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