Saturday morning, 8:44.
A familiar WhatsApp sound arrives.
I look at my phone.
Oliver Frljić.
The last time we spoke, WhatsApp chat tells me, was April 10, 2026. Today is September 26, 2026.
He sent me the book he promised me a long time ago he would send. And he actually did. Here is the proof.
But why this particular book?
Because we met during a period when I was in the middle of my long-term performance and vow of silence, 4’33”, during which I did not speak for four months and thirty-three minutes. He liked that. We have been in contact ever since. But only through writing. He has never heard the colour of my voice. He don’t know what I sound like when I speak.
Then I asked him how he was and where he was.
He replied:
Here I am, in Zagreb. I’m about to start my PhD, working on the relationship between art and destruction. And I’m continuing to direct for a little while longer, hoping that one day it will stop. I’m trying to go as far as I can, mostly away from myself.
I replied that it sounded fantastic. Very hopeful.
Then he wrote:
In the context of this doctoral research, I was thinking about whether silence destroys noise, or the other way around.
I replied that John Cage had thought about this too: 4’33”, a sonata of unplanned noise.