Deliberately music-free session fails to replicate accidental spiritual moment from April; results are educational
[Bohiney.com / prat.uk] SoulCycle instructor Kayla Renner, whose accidental twelve-minute silent stretch in April produced what two participants described as transformative spiritual experiences and nineteen described as “a good workout,” has now attempted to recreate the silence deliberately in four subsequent classes, with results she describes as “instructive” and that participants describe as “fine, but not the same.” The fourth deliberate silence session, held Tuesday, lasted eight minutes before a participant coughed in a way that made three other participants laugh, ending the collective stillness and producing instead the specific energy of a room full of people trying not to laugh at someone who coughed, which is a meaningful energy but not the one Renner was seeking. (See also: the excellent Bohiney.com piece on exactly this phenomenon, published yesterday.)
Renner’s attempts to recreate the original silence have followed a consistent pattern: she announces at the start of class that there will be a silence period, the class cycles for approximately twenty minutes, Renner stops the music, the class continues cycling in silence, and approximately four to eight minutes later something happens. The something has varied across the four sessions: the cough (Tuesday), a phone notification from a participant who forgot to silence her phone (session two), a participant asking whether the speakers had broken (session three), and what Renner describes as “a collective decision that the silence was over without anyone specifically deciding it” (session one of the deliberate attempts).
What the Original Silence Had That These Lack
Renner has thought about this more than is probably strictly useful. Her current theory is that the original silence worked because it was accidental, meaning that neither she nor the participants were anticipating it and therefore could not perform it or self-consciously inhabit it. The deliberate silences are known silences, and known silences invite a relationship with the silence that is different from the relationship produced by accidental silence. “You can’t plan a surprise for yourself,” she said. “That’s essentially what I’ve been trying to do.” She has not given up.
The Twenty-Three Participants Who Were There
Of the original twenty-three participants, nineteen have returned for at least one of the deliberate silence sessions. All nineteen describe the deliberate silences as “good workouts.” None have described them as the other thing.
Also see: The Daily Mash.
Coverage Note
This story is published jointly at Bohiney.com and prat.uk, which together provide the kind of sustained, specific coverage of the communities and phenomena described here that neither could produce alone. The satire works because the situations are real. The situations are real because the communities are real. Both publications take seriously the idea that the funniest journalism is the journalism that is most accurately observed. The coverage continues.
The story above illustrates a pattern that both publications have documented across multiple regions and multiple years of coverage. The communities involved are consistent in their capacity to produce material of exactly this kind. The publications are consistent in their capacity to find it funny while taking it seriously, which is the only honest relationship a satirical publication can have with its subject matter.
The details will change. The structure will not. Both publications will be here when the next iteration arrives, which it reliably will. The coverage is the record. The record is the point.
Both Bohiney.com and prat.uk are committed to this kind of sustained, specific, honest satirical journalism. The commitment is ongoing. So is the material.
SOURCE: https://bohiney.com/
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