Free reflections by me about the “ma” in art, music, literature plus about Eastern/Western spirituality, awareness and more

Silence, emptiness, its meaning, how it can (or can not) speak to us, has always been an important concept that I often tried to explore in my meditations. Over the years I came to think about it many times, sometimes forced by events, losses, successes or failures, and sometimes just because I felt it like something important, to which I had to find a place and an understanding in my own perception of it.
I feel that the depth of its meaning and its presence, is something that exists in everyones life, whether we stop and think about it or not. Although it is (by definition) a silent presence it is something that screams when it is express in art, of by nature, music, etc. No one is immune to that. I am a woman of Western origins but in my readings and studies I have discovered how this has found a central place in the Eastern culture spirituality and approach. There is a word, a concept, describing it and representing a sort of starting point for the voyage towards humbly trying to understand it. The Japanese word, in the pure, beautiful, essentiality typical of Japan culture, is made of a single syllable: “ma”.If someone would look it up in a dictionary or Encyclopaedia, this is one of the possible definitions she would get

“Ma (間 ) is a Japanese word which can be roughly translated as “gap”, “space”, “pause” or “the space between two structural parts.”

The spatial concept is experienced progressively through intervals of spatial designation. In Japanese, /ma/, the word for space, suggests interval. It is best described as a consciousness of place, not in the sense of an enclosed three-dimensional entity, but rather the simultaneous awareness of form and non-form deriving from an intensification of vision.
Ma is not something that is created by compositional elements; it takes place in the imagination of the human who experiences these elements. Therefore, ma can be defined as experiential place understood with emphasis on interval.
Ma has also been described as “an emptiness full of possibilities, like a promise yet to be fulfilled”, and as “the silence between the notes which make the music” {from the web}

How beautiful is that?

The “ma” is all around us, it is the connective tissue over which all things floats, We are made of substance, so we hardly ever are aware of it, but it is there. Western world is a world full of things, we live in a chaotic world, bombarded by inputs, so we rather stop from one entity to the other, one sound to the next, one meeting to the next, almost never aware of the emptiness connecting us all (and the force of it).

There are persons though, artists, writers, scientists, artisans, monks, moms, and everyday people having a natural skill. The skill to make us “hear” that.

I was listening to Bach’s Goldberg Variations, performed by Glenn Gould. Nobody ever played the piano like him. Eccentric, insane, outworldish impossible as he was, he just had that ability to stretch the notes to impossibly slow paces, without ever be boring, or dull. He played them with so much soul and with such mastery that as of today no one ever has still come close to that. How did he do that? How could he do that? He simply “had” it. His natural genius was that. To fill the empty spaces with perfectly timed emptiness that simply bounds the listener, takes her hand and transport her in a magic cuddling carpet. It then becomes a speedy rollercoaster. To then place a void, a void over which we are breathless, panting, and we experience it, the “ma”. No, we do not have to have trained ears to experience that.

Writers do the same. Great writers do create that, takes you and then stretch our feelings, so that to make us taste every single drop of it, exhaustingly teasing us and never being dull, naturally. To then feed us with all the colours and then again. – The ma –

Some have a natural ability into that, they sort of naturally relate to it. This is both for Western or Eastern world, even though in my world we do not “worship” the emptiness or ever think about it. To elevate empty spaces into something spiritual and a central part is something more typical of the Eastern World. Japanese iconography is full of it, such as music. Hereafter the work by Hasegawa is an example of it.

To do that in music one has to be able to pull the listener, (reader, observer). Only like that you can take to the edge and then let the listener free. Free to get lost and enjoy the space, free to appreciate the vastness, emptiness, and wander through it, mixing it with the own feelings. Stretching without ever be dragging, or boring.

A musical director once said
“to carry on such slow rhythm and direct an artist doing that, while keeping it interesting it requires a total complete immersion, it needs someone whose inner rhythms are very very strong”.
I also remember a video of an interview to a famous drummer who once recorded with Miles Davis. Miles Davis wanted him to do a cover and started playing to illustrate what he wanted to do and then added
“The only thing you have to to do now is to keep an easy slow pace with the snare, just a snare, like this: fssht — …….. — …….. — fssht”
yet, the silence and space between the two sounds was so long that it was virtually impossible to keep it. Absolutely impossible. They ended up with Miles having a mic by the leg and tapping his own thigh by himself

What is beautiful to me is also how this is absolutely universal. How that is the same for all things and the most diverse aspects of life. It is true in relationships, in speaking to friends, in loving, in smiling, in holding something in the heart. Oh my, I SO FEEL IT. I always felt that and once one feels it, it is like a burning fire always there for us, our personal precious “ma”.

I have found out the women are normally more capable of that. We have that patience, mixed with stubborn passion, that makes it easier for us. Mistuko Uchida and Martha Argerich are examples of unbelievable talented pianists possessing that ability. Plus Glenn.

I have another related thing to write about; Rhythm.
It will be in another post.

{thoughts and reflections by me, feel free to disagree and find them absurd *smile*}

Kitty Michele Laurier – November 2019