Creative Practice: spaces between

Musicians -- all artists, indeed -- know that the silences, the rests, the pauses, the time for breath, are right, are needed, are as much a part of the creation, as are the notes, the words, and the voices.

As much as they are a natural part of creation, it often takes patience to see them and to hear them, though, to live through them with attention and acceptance. True in other areas of life as well.

Related ideas and music you may wish to explore

The album Alterum, from Scotland’s Julie Fowlis, in a story here at Music Road

From Jay Ungar and Molly Mason, a recording called The Quiet Room. Learn about why they chose the songs and the name of the album.

At Wandering Educators, Music and Horizons: Stories of Hope, which is part of the Music for Shifting Times series I have been writing there for some time. This story includes music from Breabach, Zoe Conway and John McIntyre, Eddi Reader, Sarah-Jane Summers, and Cathie Ryan. You will have met some of the work of these artists here along the music road too.

From harpist, composer, and singer Aine Minogue, the album In the Name of Stillness, in which, in the sleeve notes and through videos, she pairs her music with words from Irish poet and author John O’Donohue. The story is here at Music Road.

Quiet and reflection: I wrote this for publication a few days before Christmas one year at Perceptive Travel; the ideas work at other seasons as well Christmas, Reflections, Travel.

Photographs are by Kerry Dexter. They were made in County Louth, Ireland. Thank you for respecting copyright.

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Music and quiet

Silence: the exterior sort is often inspiration for creative work, and the interior sort is that, too, and is also part of creation itself

So it might seem a paradox that music is very often a gateway to silence. However, when you think about it, really think about and feel music -- and especially if you are a musician yourself -- you’ll come to know that music arises out of silence. It’s not just, hey, we begin! music is, if it’s really good, continuing of and sharing of the inspiration and conversation that begin with that interior quiet. That’s a thought which sounds like another paradox even as I write it, but that makes it no less true.

That idea of creativity arises from silence -- sometimes long quiet, sometimes just the beat of a breath between observation and connection -- works with other sorts of creativity, as well. The dancer in the moment before the dance, the chef at the moment of connecing ideas are also there in that silence. As I write this it is National Poetry Month in the US, so I invite you to think about how this might apply in that area. A recent trip to spend time with the paintings of the Glasgow Boys at Kelvingrove in Glasgow had me reflecting on how this works with visual art as well, especially, for example, the two very different paintings of the Victorian scene in Stirling Station and the evocation of druids in Bringing in the Mistletoe.

Musicians paint their pictures on silence, as the saying goes.

Music to go along with these ideas

Cathie Ryan: The Farthest Wave
Kathy Mattea: Calling Me Home
Hanneke Cassel: For Reasons Unseen

and this Eddi Reader: Wild Mountainside

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music, silence, and spiritual journey

Photograph of a wild mountainside in Ireland is by Kerry Dexter, and is copyrighted. Thank you for respecting this.

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Music and silence

Music and silence arise from each other. They frame each other in the listening, the sharing, the creation, the performance. Think of the moments in between songs or tunes or orchestral movements. They form as much a part of the music as does the unfolding story of the notes and words.

There is music that calls directly on that aspect of framing silence, as well.

Tony Duncan’s music lends itself to that idea. On his album Earth Warrior: Light of Our Ancestors he performs songs which honor his family, his tribal heritage (he is of Apache/Mandan/Arikara/Hidatsa peoples), the landscapes of their history and his own, and the connections of all of these things with music. Duncan’s instrument is the Native American flute, an instrument he first began to learn from his father. Through traditional pieces including Zuni Sunrise, Taos Round Dance, and Going Home and his own stories in song including Battle for Night, Ancient Stories, Grandmother Moon, and The Flicker of Light, Duncan both invites and guides contemplation of landscape, story. sound, and silence.

So does Padraigin Ni Uallachain, though she comes for a very different set of landscapes and music tradition. The wellspring of her music for Songs of the Scribe is the poetry of ancient Ireland. She chooses not the great epic stories, compelling as they may be, but rather the marginal notes, the asides, the personal poetry of those scribes who created illuminated manuscripts, and at times left marginal notes which illuminated their own lives as well. Longing for a lost love, a reflection that the wild winds of an Irish night mean that the writer is safe from Viking attacks for these hours, the flight of a blackbird across the water, a hermit's praise to God, a quiet time with a companionable cat: all these are things which caught poets’ imaginations and catch Ni Uallachain's, as well, as she creates contemplative settings of these words though her voice and spare accompaniment of drone, bells, harp, and Tibetan bowl.



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creative practice: silence, again

The quiet spaces, the breaths and pauses and rests are as much a parts of the music, and as creative a part of the music, as are the notes you play or sing. The white space is as much a part of the image as are the colors and design. And time alone and time in community, time listening and time speaking are both part of an artist’s work and life. As is time for the bread to rise and the sun to set, and time and space to notice these things.

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now playing: Emily Smith: Too Long Away

creative practice: the spaces between

-->If you'd like to support my creative work,
here is a way to do that, through PayPal. Note that you do not have to have a PayPal account to do this.Thank you.

creative practice: silence, part one

A number of writers I know decided to celebrate the merry month of May by challenging themselves to post once a day (in some cases more) on their blogs. I decided not to join them.

For me, the silence is as important as the sound, and you need as much of one as you do of the other. Maybe that's because I write a lot about music, and visual arts, and matters of the spirit, and history, and landscape -- ot maybe not. In music what you do with the silence is as important as what you do with the words, with the sounds. There's also the whole idea, in several spiritual tradtions, of interior silence. There's white space, open space, in the visual arts and in landscape.

That's not to say these folks, fine writers all, are creating noise. They just approach their creativity differently than I do mine.


Here's a list of their blogs,
if you want to see how they are getting along. They write about all sorts of things, from lacrosse to writing tips.

creative practice: the spaces between

Musicians -- all artists, indeed -- know that the silences, the rests, the pauses, the time for breath, are right, are needed, are as much a part of the creation, as are the notes, the words, and the voices.

As much as they are a natural part of creation, it often takes patience to see them and to hear them, though, to live through them with attention and acceptance. True in other areas of life as well.

music to go along with these ideas includes

Scottish/Cape Breton/American Celtic style fiddler Hanneke Cassel's latest release, Calm the Raging Seas.
American heartland folk singer and songwriter Carrie Newcomer's The Geography of Light, and her earlier recording, The Gathering of Spirits
Irish American musician Cathie Ryan's The Farthest Wave
Mexican American songwriter Tish Hinojosa's Dreaming from the Labyrinth

creative practice: silence

Silence has so much presence in creative practice. At times, it's the light which illuminates; at other times it's a place of rest; sometimes it is welcoming, sometimes just plain inscrutable.