I am preparing a long article on what new (sustainable) luxury is. It’s a really difficult topic, I think. It would make sense for me to write about sumptuous products made to last, slow, ethically produced fashion gowns, simple, yet exclusive, eco-resorts, new edible packaging materials, and slow, sensuously intense dining experiences.
Yet, I am not sure that it is the whole truth about new luxury anymore. Is it? Maybe to an extent it is. Yes. I think so. And I will write partly about exactly those topics. But, when I sit quietly for a while and ponder about what the most luxurious experiences look like and feel like to me (and already there, by saying experiences, I have moved in a direction that indicates that luxury might be more immaterial than material), the first thing that comes to mind is silence.
Silence? You might say (slightly annoyed), and I know it sounds a bit weird in a sanctimonious kind of way. It might even connote something like isolated monasteries and silent retreats, which is not the intention at all.
But I am serious. Silence is a luxury. Why? Because it is a rarity and hereby exclusive. Our world is polluted by noise and distractions. We are almost always forced to listen to something (traffic, neighbours, construction work, people talking or shouting or singing, televisions, radios etc etc). I realised this yesterday when I arrived at an off-grid (very very quiet) house in Lombok.
When are we ever in a place of silence? Almost never, right? It happens so rarely that when it does, it (initially) feels strange, even uncomfortable, and we do what we can to fill the void: turn on music, or desperately seek a wifi signal.
But silence is a luxury, because when we experience it and allow for it to embrace us (if only for a while) something happens. Something fascinating, beautiful, scary, sublime… We are met by our thoughts, dreams, desires, ideas. They all queue up, longing to be heard (quietly, of course).
Therefore, silence should be followed by another luxurious “thing”, namely time. These two “new” luxuries, silence and time, should actually always go hand in hand.
They are a potentially rebellious luxurious pair, though, as they often lead to disruptive, rewilded behaviour. Maybe that’s why I love them so much.
(As a side remark: The quiet house I am currently staying in is not really that quiet at all: I can hear birds, monkeys, geckos, frogs, and even bells from the buffaloes grazing in the hills around the house. But these.sounds are not noisy. On the contrary; they are comfortable, beautiful).
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This post was previously published on medium.com.
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