Beauty Among the Spaces

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It shouldn’t be this hard. Seven colors in the rainbow. Seven notes on the musical staff. OK, so 26 letters in the alphabet complicates the process a bit. But beauty still shouldn’t be so illusive. Look. Listen. Colors. Sounds. Words. It seems as if all we have to do is pay attention. And yet it is so rare. Those moments when something brings us up short. You hold your breath. Words disappear. Time stumbles for a moment, pauses. Sound is clearer, more focused. Beauty overwhelms us. But attempts to describe "what just happened" seem childish at best - banal and foolish if pursued. And that is when frustration sets in and we think, “It shouldn’t be this hard."

But it is, and the reason is the spaces. The spaces between the colors. The spaces between the notes. All the spaces where letters can go. Beauty lives in those spaces. Hold a basic "color wheel" up to a sunset. Yeah, spaces. Tom Dowd, who mixed the piece, once described Eric Clapton’s and Duane Altman’s guitar duet on Layla as using “notes that aren’t anywhere on those instruments.” Spaces. Shakespeare’s Sonnet 116. How did he know which words to use and where to put them? Spaces.

Critics and editors notwithstanding, we are staggered by moments of impossible beauty not because we understand them, not because we know where the sights and sounds and smells belong; not because we can categorize the essence of the moment. We are staggered by such moments precisely because we can’t. Such moments live in the spaces. And it is knowing that these spaces are there that drives artists in every field insane. Staring at the blank page, the empty canvas, the taunting score. These are the moments that drive artists to consider pursuing easier careers - nuclear engineering, theoretical physics, surgery, law. I often said to my students that few people choose to be artists. Rather, the art chooses the artist, and for the truly gifted, never lets go. Not because of the frustration. Because of the rewards.

And no, I don’t mean selling a painting at Christie’s for mega-millions, or attracting millions of followers on some social media platform. The rewards I am talking about are infinitely more rare, more precious. I am talking about recognizing one of those mystical moments of perfection and using your special gift to save it. To freeze it somehow. To capture it for others to share, there, among the spaces.

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