Mute Song

The author came across the term itself during a conversation with an elderly man while traveling through the northern portion of Lika, but there is no way of telling whether it is limited to only the Lika region. One might be predisposed to think otherwise. The elderly man claimed that he knew a 'mute song': when he was urged to perform it, he refused to do so, saying that, after all, it was 'mute'. (Included is a transcription of a conversation which the author recorded on tape; most of the recorded interview is not, however, fully comprehensible.)

The author: "How can someone sing silence?" The old man: "You don't sing the silence...it sings you. You are merely the vessel." Author: "When would you sing a mute song?" Old man: "When I feel that someone else knows it." Author: "Pardon?" Old man: "When I feel that someone else or several others know it so we can sing it together." Author: "Do you mean you are silent together?" Old man: "We're singing, you're silent."


"Mute Song," David Albahari
Words are Something Else, 1996