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When the Quiet is my Music, the Moments become Songs

2/9/2015

1 Comment

 
A few weeks ago I wrote about playing the cello.  And I mentioned that anytime I hear music, I always noticed when there is a cello within the notes. I hear this rich, deep sound and it so resonates throughout my body.  And thinking about this, about the playing of this instrument and the hearing of this rich sound is somewhat humorous to me because, though there is so much music in me, I seldom listen to it.

I listen in my car. Especially when my children are with me. They have this great, eclectic musical taste and so it's always fun to listen with them.  And sometimes I will listen on my own.  Mainly because my daughter made me many cd's with all the songs we love to listen to together.  So I do listen.  But more often I crave quiet. 

The quiet is my music.

Quiet is not silence.  It never is for me. For me, silence has a tension to it.  An expectation of something coming because there is something missing.  For me anyway.  But quiet.  Quiet is a calm.

And so in between the cello and the music that I listen to, not so much but some, I have quiet, too.   When the wind blows warm and the smell of hot air hits against my skin there is also the quiet of the rustle of the trees where the warm wind lingers.  The quiet on my porch accompanies the slow hum when a car would drift by on the road that runs a mile from my home.  And the soft purr of my cat stretched out next to me on the bed lingers in the quiet spaces that I love so much. 

I notice these quiet sounds and then I don't.  Until I do again.  A noticing and then a falling away and I am unaware of them until I notice them again.  But I don't really even notice that I am aware of the quiet, and then not and then again.  I notice this now, writing about it here.  Here I am mindful of this.  But when it is happening.  When I am in this quiet, where the sounds around me ebb in and out of me, I do not really take notice of them.  No light shines on them separate from anything else. 

And this is what creates the quiet.  This is where the calm lives.

I don’t think we, as a culture, take the time to hear this quietness. And so we lose the possibility of embracing the calmness.  We hurry through our lives, filled up with good, and not so good, things.  We take the good with the bad because that’s just the way it is, and we laugh and love and feel ok and because we are so used to so much filling our lives, we are not used to those empty spaces in between.  And so we fill them up, too.

And so I say, let’s not do that today. Let’s not look at those moments that we have where we have nothing to do, nowhere to go, nothing to say or hear or be, and automatically fill them up.  Let us instead sit in the quiet. Let us instead settle into the nothingness of this one moment.  And then let it ebb and flow into other quiet moments, too.  So that the calmness can be shared between us.  As I am sharing this with you.

1 Comment
Deborah Tutnauer link
2/23/2015 02:17:08 am

Ah Ha.
This is how I live my life - every moment that I can. The quiet is what propels me into the forest and to the tops of mountains. The quiet is why I rarely have sound in my car when I'm alone - except on endlessly long trips across the country.. The quiet, is why I don't miss much no longer having a "sound system" in my house. (When it all went digital it got too confusing as to how to run it through the speakers and well then...I never missed it).

The quiet is where I live in my head often - every chance I get. Sometimes it's filled with busy lists. Often it's just quiet - as my skis slide along the endless Xcountry track and the sky is bright blue and there is nothing but everything.

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    Elizabeth Rose

    Mother, Wife, Friend, Sister, Daughter, Dancer, Rower, Runner, Dog and Cat lover.

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