Tiny tunes, form and formless, structure and space...

 One of the challenges I accepted this week was inspired by Eckhart Tolle’s Freedom From the World conference, in which he described music which allows for the space or stillness between notes.  I had always thought of music as just the notes, the structure, the form.  But in his description of spiritual music, he pointed out that music is also music because of the pauses, the space between notes, the silence.  In that silence or stillness is being.

Just like in the Tao Te Ching, where it mentions that a cup is useful because of its emptiness.  If it is already full, it is of no use to me.  Its very essence of being empty is what makes so valuable, because then it can receive whatever is needed.  

Tao Te Ching 16-

“Effect emptiness to the extreme.

Keep stillness whole.

Myriad things act in concert.

I therefore watch their return.

All things flourish and each returns to its root.

Returning to the root is called quietude.

Quietude is called returning to life.” 

And again in TaoTe Ching 11- 

“Thirty spokes join together in the hub.

It is because of what is not there that the cart is useful.

Clay is formed into a vessel.

It is because of its emptiness that the vessel is useful.

Cut doors and windows to make a room.

It is because of its emptiness that the room is useful.

Therefore, what is present is used for profit.

But it is in absence that there is usefulness.”

So, in my first attempt to create music which honored the space between the notes, I wrote this little interlude.  I suppose if it needs a title, I would call it...Sunday Lament.