- Debussy
Any idiot can listen to the notes. They're loud. They're obvious. They're in your face. You couldn't not hear them even if you tried. But if you stop, and calm your breath for a moment, you can also hear the silence between the notes - just as one ends, right before the next one begins. It's always there, sometimes so long it's impossible not to hear it ... sometimes so brief you question if it was really there at all. It's always there. If it weren't there would be no music at all - there would only be one constant, never-changing note that drones on and on and on.
Take a deep breath and try it. Just listen to the first 30 seconds ... not to the notes - to the spaces in between:
Did you hear it? If not ... try a few seconds of this one:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2J6IA5T7RTs&feature=emb_logo
The spaces matter. At least as much as the notes. Maybe more. They're so easy to miss, to bleep right by, in all our excitement to get to the next note.
It's been a hard year for most of the world: Covid-19: uncertainty, fear, sickness, and death. Businesses closing and the job losses that follow. The inability to pay rent or buy food. College kids ready to fly who instead remain locked down in their childhood nests. The older population, worldwide, isolated, cutoff from their families and friends while sometimes also struggling with being cutoff from themselves and their own memories. The US election. George Floyd and all those that suffered before him, and all those that have continued to suffer since. A beheading for god's sake! All this on top of life's normal challenges, losses, illnesses, and failures. Single file drive-by Graduations in cap and gown to pick up your diploma. Funerals without hugs from friends. Weddings without toasts to a long happy life together, without the chicken dance. The list goes on and on and on.
Now we're in the holiday season which, no matter where you are in the world, or what your religion or beliefs are, or aren't, includes one almost universal theme: being together with those you love most. But this year it must go without even that - sometimes due to government restrictions, sometimes due to just plain old common sense. Holiday celebrations are cancelled or happening in much smaller household groups, or for some, alone.
All of these things are impossibly heavy 'notes' that feel more and more crushing by the day. And they are LOUD and some of the most god-awful, ear-violating, combination of sounds that many - probably MOST - of us have ever heard in our lifetimes. This horrible, headache-inducing song has been playing for months, and it's hard to see when it will ever end. It's exhausting, and painful, and at times downright unbearable. But if we can find the strength to stop and breathe in the midst of all these horrific 'notes' ... we can hear that, living in the spaces in between, in the long pauses that hit you over the head ... and in the short silences that you can barely catch .... still there, just as it has always been and always will be .... is joy.
It's not handed to us on a shiny platter. It might take some conscious effort to find. Maybe even a little squinting. But it's there. It comes as fond memories, as hopes and dreams for the future, as the smell of mom's stuffing in the oven. As friends checking in with friends, simply because. As a few minutes of hysterical laughter on a Zoom happy-hour about the dumbest damn thing ever. As a plate of ham dropped off by a neighbor because they had too much and wanted to share. As a bird singing in a tree after the rain has stopped. As a dog howling and dancing when he sees his owner. As a couple still appreciating that they found each other, even after 'all these years'. As a dad playing with his daughter not because he has to, but because it's what he wants to be doing more than anything else. This list, just like the agonies above, also goes on and on and on.
It's easy to be angry and bitter, to be snarky and unkind. To focus on everything that has been lost, on what we can't have right now, the places we can't go and the people we can't be with, and whose fault we're sure it all is. To be consumed by finding someone or something to blame, to hate. It's much harder to be grateful: for all that we were lucky enough to have once had, for everything that we still have today, and for all that we have faith that we will have in the future - for ourselves, for our family and friends, and for complete strangers in our own neighborhoods and on the other side of the world.
In music, and in life, the true beauty lies in the spaces in between. Sometimes it's not easy to find it ... but it's always worth it.
Happy Holidays from Inside the Radius, until we can ALL meet again Outside the Radius.
