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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