In the summer while at the cottage, I spend my mornings in silence by the lily pond. I slowly become aware of the extreme discipline of stabilizing myself in the void that is full. When I am able to surrender to the silent void, I dissolve into a dance of love. And the beauty, the beauty of the experience, causes me to weep -- to weep in reverence for what it is, for what I am, for what all life is. The beauty of the reality of love existing within all forms of life softens me into a gentleness that cannot force itself into action. Instead I discover a beautiful quality living within me that radiates strength and direction ... By surrendering to the process I find I am living in a state of grace. I start to hear the forms of life around me as sounds, sounds not heard by my ears but known by the silence. I know I can't take this experience into the world, but I can return to this place and refocus in the love that I want to live in the world.
~ from LEAVING MY FATHER'S HOUSE by Marion Woodman
I'm coming to believe in the importance of silence in music. The power of silence after a phrase of music, for example: the dramatic silence after the first four notes of Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, or the space between the notes of a Miles Davis solo. There is something very specific about a "rest" in music. You take your foot off the pedal and pay attention. I'm wondering as musicians whether the most important thing we do is merely to provide a frame for silence. I'm wondering if silence itself is perhaps the mystery at the heart of music. And is silence the most perfect form of music of all? Songwriting is the only form of meditation I know. And it is only in silence that the gifts of melody and metaphor are offered.
