The accumulated wisdom of centuries teaches us that God speaks to the human heart most intimately only in silence. Silence and an inner emptiness or receptivity are the strange conditions for all our relationships. Without the ability to be silent, to wait, to be receptive, all our attempts at communion become manipulative and possessive. We become frustrated because we want instant gratification. We want all of who we are to be revealed. We want to know the end of the story. We find it difficult to wait. Waiting in the stillness, is, perhaps, the hardest of all human activities. It is not only hard; it is dangerous. The act of self-emptying leaves us open to attack from other quarters ... Yet it is only in silence that who we really are begins to appear. In the end, we need not fear, for it is our own best self struggling within, longing to be free.
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.