The Impossible Bio

When Silence Orders Chaos

I spent an hour reordering three paragraphs for Amazon Author Central. Moving “earthen architect” above “composer.” Then below. Then parallel. Each arrangement creating a different person who didn’t exist.

My rammed earth construction guide needed a bio. Engineers attend my workshops, send me soil samples when labs aren’t viable. But how do you write that without sounding like either an amateur or like claiming credentials you don’t have?

Version 1: “Composer who also builds with earth...”
(They hear: Dilettante with a mud hobby)

Version 2: “Earth builder who also composes...”
(They hear: Why is he writing music theory?)

Version 3: “Author exploring structure through multiple mediums...”
(They hear: Academic who talks, doesn’t do)

Authors have one bio for everything on Amazon.

The more I explained, the less sense it made. Like Shannon’s entropy in communication theory - each additional bit of information increasing the disorder. Every qualifying phrase (” self-taught but,” “professionally consulted,” “unconventional approach”) just amplified the noise.

I added context: How ramming earth at 7% moisture is like composing - finding where particles bind. How the copyright history book came before either. Each explanation creating more confusion, not less.

Standing at my screen, facing that text box like a movie cliché mirror: “Who are you?” But maybe that was the wrong question. Maybe the question was: “Why are you explaining?”—I don’t build dams and flyovers.

Then I remembered Hemingway’s iceberg theory. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one-eighth being above water. The more you show, the less power it has.

Deleted everything. Started over:

Gokul Salvadi composes music, writes on musical structures, builds with rammed earth, and teaches earth construction. Author of a comprehensive history of artist rights in India. He lives in Palani, Tamil Nadu, in the rammed earth house he built.

No hierarchy. No explanation. No “primarily” or “also.” Just parallel facts floating like separate icebergs, seven-eighths submerged. The connections - how earth and music and copyright are the same investigation - stay below the waterline where they have power.

The bio that tried to explain everything explained nothing. The bio that said only what is says everything. Like closing a window without justifying why. Like building foam pyramids labeled “THIS IS FOAM” without elaborating on the absurdity.

Sometimes the most precise communication is stopping before you create disorder. The perpendicular line to earth doesn’t need to explain its relationship to gravity.

The engineers in my workshops don’t need my bio explained. They need their walls to stop failing. The readers don’t need to understand why a composer writes about earth. They need to know if the book is worth reading.

The silence between the facts holds more truth than any connecting phrase I could write. In information theory, this is called signal-to-noise ratio. In life, it’s called knowing when to stop talking.