Nothing absolute... I hear the odd bit of birdsong now or again of a plane somewhere far & low. I know the world has not stopped... so what is different? It is first about my not really having "started"... yet, other mornings my brain is nattering or nearly booming, even, before I open my eyes to the big picture which unfolds just beyond the comforter.
Another aspect for appreciation of quiet is solitude. It has long been rare to share quiet. I remember that from days hiking in Arizona, taking the pulse of a relationship with a companion on the trail... Some times we would find the sweetest conversations with our eyes & ear open & our mouths shut. But that was a rare thing.Most humans seem to need to fill time with chat. Silence has come to suggest a lack of connection, when it could also be filled with the subtle discernment of absolute connection through such awareness it need not be sullied by the clumsy translations into words.
That applies to written words as well, I come again to know. Perhaps I ought to stop & listen without feeling compelled to write about my rare enjoyment...
Stephen left very early for a two day travel to Spokane, calling me just as I was enjoying having discovered the pot of coffee he'd made, but didn't have time to bring up, as usual, to be waiting on my bed table when I opened my eyes... It was just as happy a love-gift found on the kitchen counter!
So I have the solitude & the silence. Now comes a bit of the sun he reported having in that call from beyond the Cascades. It was dark & soggy when he left. Our rains have been reluctantly giving over to the promises of a clearing break. What we have been experiencing here is not so different than the monsoons we would avoid if planning a trip to the tropics...
Solitude, Silence & Sun breaking through what remains rather overcast. Solitude has changed by the arrival of my bookkeeper, now working at the studio's computer... I have thus also broken the silence with another conversation... So, the moment, it would seem, has passed. Yet as I return to my bed & laptop I find a second calm. I must be working this from within... Hurrah!
This depth of quiet is part of studio... That word so vague because it describes a vast variety of containers for so much, having so many forms in creative endeavor. It is, in this sense, a state of mind... a state of soul. It is receptivity. It is, like the roots of the word, about study... I feel content to stay open even as I practice again losing the delicacies of the early mood, while yet retaining as much as I can of such a gift in awareness. Having had it has reminded me of possibility. Having had it, it is mine again & now I can move with more grace into the middle processes of actually working to live my creativity.
That middle is so very different than the liminal state where one works such ephemeral possibilities so easily toward such fabulous probabilities... all without lifting a finger... Unless like some cartoon of the Biblical Godhead Pointing! But my artist ultimately must involve herself with so much more of the mundane stuffs... the middle place is to struggle with both ideas & materials.
I have brought these words through a passage which has attached the need to actually go to work in the studio full of wax, metal, & tools, yet I encourage trying to hold moments like the beginning for the energy which comes when one can allow oneself to sit for awhile gorging on quiet. Work happens best when it works through both places...
1 comment:
Silence and solitude often tap the wellspring of creativity for me...I do need to be by myself often, to sing well. This need is always at odds with the needs of concert performances, but I used to accomplish this by partly withdrawing, even on the concert stage, into myself to create music. The other part would be to interact with the audience...but to me, solitude is an essential part of life. Enjoy it,Gordon, until Stephen gets back!
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