[-essay, music-]

This article reminds us about the importance of listening for those spaces, not only in music but in our lives.

by guest contributor, Edward Weiss

While most students want to know when to play certain notes and chords, it’s equally important to know when not to play. For example, I had a student who knew how to improvise and play in the New Age style. What he didn’t know how to do was to allow for breathing space. I tried to teach him that you don’t have to play note upon note but allow for some pauses.

Eventually he got it. He learned how not to rush and that the pauses between notes are as important as the notes themselves - especially in the New Age style of piano playing. Listen to pioneer New Age piano player Steven Halpern to get an excellent idea of this. Steven literally defined “breathing space” for music. His music floats in the air. It is pure improvisation and, if you listen to him play, you’ll find that it’s one of the easiest styles to play in.

He let’s the spaces in between the notes work for him. There’s definitely no rushing here. It’s very trance inducing and calming. To play in this way, you need to be very much IN THE PRESENT and listen for what’s to come. There’s no planning or forethought here except maybe to choose a Key or Mode to play in. Then you just improvise.

The spaces between the music are as important as the music itself. In fact, without the spaces, you wouldn’t have this style. The spaces define the style of music. A lot of New Age pianists emulated Halpern and you can’t do better to learn how to master the art of silence than by listening to him. Also, check out the author’s online piano lesson “Oriental Sunrise” to get another good example of “breathing space.”

© 2005 - 2007 Edward Weiss

Edward Weiss is a pianist/composer and webmaster of Quiescence Music’s online piano lessons. He has been helping students learn how to play piano in the New Age style for over 14 years and now teaches an online class. Stop by for a FREE piano lesson! Article Source: ezinearticles.com

Published by the permission of the author in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces

[-inspiration-]

Inspiration means to inhale, to breathe in. It was chosen as the theme of the first Practically Creative Quarterly because this project is the result of inspiration brought on by my recent exploration of webdesign.

Learning something new always energizes and leaves me with a delightful side effect: an urge to revisit and expand upon interests that have been dormant or languishing due to lack of inspiration. My abiding interests in art, writing and the creative process are refreshed by this new-to-me medium.

None of us would last long if we only breathed out. Remember that when your enthusiasm fades. Everything here is meant to help you discover or be reminded of how you get inspired. Reading and viewing what’s in this issue will renew, refresh and get you ready.

Breathe it in — and out.

Inspiration fills us. Exhalation is putting what we’ve created out into the world.

Art work: an artist trading card/painted photograph by Nancy Waldman
© 05-07

Originally published in the April 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: inspiration

[-r-mind, perception, exercise-]

by Nancy S. M. Waldman

If, when you try to create, you find yourself full of doubts about your abilities, you are by definition, NOT in a state of R-mindfulness. The R-mindful brain is not worried about wasting time. It’s not worried about lack of talent. It’s not worried about product. In fact, it’s not worried about anything.

An R-mind is focused on the activity of creating, not on the person doing the work. In order to successfully create, we must get to that space/place within ourselves where the work becomes the focus instead of doubts about ourselves.

Because our “everyday” mind (the “L-mode”) is so used to being in the forefront, making decisions, doing the daily mental chores, it won’t give up control easily. That is why we often must fight down the sudden urge to clean the kitchen floor when we sit down to finish a short story or begin a sewing project. To the everyday mind, it makes perfect sense that the kitchen floor needs our attention more than this impractical, optional creative project. But that creative activity is as much a part of us - more, it could be argued - as the practical activities of daily living. It’s just that the creative mind is a gentle, subtle, easily cowed part of us. We must learn how to let it take the stage.

Since our theme is Space … and spaces, this issue’s trick involves focusing on negative space. The magic lies in being able to trick your L-mode into giving up control. When the everyday mind is confused, confronted with a sensory puzzle it can’t readily solve, it will recede and you will be on your way to being R-mindful.
Read the instructions several times before trying it.

Before beginning your creative project, sit comfortably at your desk, sewing table or wherever the work will occur.

1. Close your eyes, take a big deep breath, and let it out slowly.
2. With your eyes still shut, breathe deeply, in and out, very slowly, exactly three times.
3. Open your eyes. SEE what is in front of you.
4. Notice the word: “see” instead of “look at.” they aren’t the same.
5. Expect to see something that you haven’t noted before or at least noticed in a while.
6. Focus on one thing or a part of a thing. if you find yourself unsure, zone in on the edge of something. See it.
7. While keeping your eyes on your focal point, shift your focus. let your awareness go to the immediate space around that thing.
8. Keep breathing. stay with that sight for a few moments. allow yourself to relax into this time apart.
9. Shut your eyes. breathe in and out exactly three times.
10. Open your eyes and begin to work.

Try this each time before you begin and see if it helps. You may want to read the information on R-mode in the metAphorism feature of our first issue, here.
When you see this symbol in The PCQ be aware that this is information that may help you understand and access this part of yourself.

Originally published in the July 2005 issue of The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: Space and Spaces

[-essay-]

by Nancy S.M. Waldman

This German word - zwischenraum - comes back to me from the past. I first heard it over 25 years ago soon after the funeral of my father. Grief is one of those painful but natural and necessary pauses in our lives. The kind of “time-out” that our minds tend to capture and highlight forever.
Because my father wasn’t a religious man, we called upon a previously unknown to us Unitarian minister to speak at Daddy’s funeral. He did a graceful job of it and the family - in thanks and in need - attended his church the following Sunday. He spoke that day of the importance to our lives of something we have no one English word for, something we rarely notice: zwischenraum, the gap between things. The concept and the significance of it has never left me.

Several weeks ago I attended my step-daughter’s dancing competition. During the adjudication portion, the judge told a group of student choreographers, that the most powerful moments in dance are often not the steps themselves, but the moments when they hold their bodies still and, by doing so, hold the audience’s rapt attention. Stillness between movements. Zwischenraum.

Musicians may have an advantage in this area because the rests - the pauses and stopping points - are not only ordered by the composer but also timed. The Ramones notwithstanding, most music would lose much of its power and pleasure without those moments of silence between the notes.

For the rest of the arts, the spaces are not always as obvious but they are just as important. When you draw something you see, do you pay attention to what you aren’t drawing? This is Negative Space and paying attention to it is a vital step in learning to beautifully reproduce what is in front of you. The air space around solid objects. Zwischenraum.

It isn’t just the arts that show us the importance of space. In our cities, the often almost non-existent breathing room between buildings, houses and signage has a negative impact on quality of life and how people respond to each other. In some places green space has become the rare oasis between everything hard and contrete. In our homes as well, we long for the luxury of more space in which to work and play. And in our days, time and space sometimes merge. “I don’t have any more space in my day” we say as if they were one and the same. Free time in-between what has to be done. Zwischenraum.

Nature abhors a vacuum and space - whether it’s actual physical space or, time - has a natural tendency to fill up before we’ve even had time to notice it’s there. When we don’t honour the spaces in our lives we feel stressed, even frantic. Overloaded and overwhelmed. Incapable. Exhausted. At times, for many of us, the lack of space/time overtakes even our most physically necessary space: sleep.

Pauses in life are restorative, necessary. A long soak in the tub. An afternoon fishing or lying outside with a good book. Meditation. Prayer. Naps. Vacations (though these have to be specifically planned to be restful!) A proper night’s sleep. These are indeed necessary. But essential time-outs aren’t always joyful. A time of grief or depression can be a time apart, a pause. These pain-filled spaces in our lives are as necessary as the pleasurable ones. These are the times when we grow into more evolved persons.

After reading this, take some time/space to consider zwischenraum. Close your eyes for a moment and think of how you feel when you are truly rested. Think of the feeling you get when nothing is looming. Or when the path ahead feels open and wide and unobstructed. It may even make you anxious if it’s been a long time since you’ve had this luxury of inner space. It is, however, vital to living life well and can be cultivated in our busy lives.

The minister from long ago was pointing out that the gap is as important to our quality of life, as what the gap is between. We must pay attention to it, or it will be filled and will vanish along with our peace of mind.

In the arts as in everything else in life, mind the zwischenraum.

‘Zwischenraum’ photo by nancy sm waldman © 05-07; all rights reserved
‘Mind the Gap’ photo by suze corte © 05-07; all rights reserved

Originally published May 2006, The Practically Creative Quarterly, theme: space and spaces