Music and silence…combine strongly because music is done with silence, and silence is full of music.

The words above aren’t my words though I recently had the pleasure of sharing them with someone who seemed to need to hear them. Her name is Brenda and I had a conversation with her a few weeks ago, after not being in touch for about 3 months. She was telling me about a presentation she had the next day, part of her training in an MFA program. With her background in marketing I’m sure this would normally be excited about this speaking opportunity, but given her current bout of laryngitis, she was pretty stressed out.

As she’s telling me of her dilemma I sent her this wonderful quote that I’d come across awhile ago. While I knew she would appreciate the beauty of it, I was surprised by how much the words seemed to alleviate her stress.

In my art I often refer to what I describe as a curious blending in nature, and it’s in this context that I think of this remark on silence and music. It is the “silence that is full of music” which is most intriguing, as if at times there is this mysterious child at play…the muse? It feels like this child is very much a part of one of my favorite pictures, Forever Dancing, a spirit that also seems to be forever young.

There must be something of love in it all too. It reminds me of a very special picture called Muse-ic by a kind artist named Pat Erickson. In the way she describes it, I know what she calls a picture is very much an outcome of love. So here is the picture, including such gentle notes…Muse-ic

So thank you Pat for saying so much in silence, and for putting it to music.

This quote also reminds of a rather unusual and wonderful evening of music performed by the Winnipeg Symphony Orchestra. What made it unusual was that there was a silent movie playing at the same time, on a screen at the back of the stage. The movie was Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times which was done in 1936, some nine years after sound had come to the cinema. Apparently he resisted the use of human voices all this time. This film was to be his last screen appearance. The concert was held in celebration of the 100th anniversary of the day of his birth. I didn’t know until that night that Chaplin also wrote music!

So there you have it, more music in silence, so to speak.

Finally, I like to add a little humor or music to my blogs, but usually at the end. So if you think of my blog as a meal, then you can think of these additions as your dessert…Dinner Roles

Oh, and I almost forgot to reference the quote from the beginning of this blog. It comes from a man many of us are very familiar with though have never heard from…his name is Marcel Marceau.