John Cage in his essays on silence writes extensively about the role of silence in music. They are essays, but in a very real sense they are musical compositions without noise. In fact, his discourse on silence is so powerful precisely because it forces the reader to focus intently upon the subject matter at hand. The words themselves are in a way immaterial. They serve to guide the mind into that still point of silence.
Th modern world is one of constant frantic energy. The pace of everything increases daily. Minute by minute we move faster and faster. A perfect symbol for this is Times Square. I love watching films from the fourties or fifties when they show their fast paced Times Square imagery. I think of the opening sequence in The Sweet Smell of Success. That fast paced Times Square would be such a relief today. If only we could go that slow!
The modern world is about movement. It is about action. Frantic action. Chaotic and uncontrolled.
Growing up I studied Aikido. For about eleven years I went once or twice a week to the Dojo and trained. Aikido grew out of Judo and is a technique of controlling and redirecting one’s opponent’s energy. At one level Aikido is all about movement and energy. You step inside a dojo and you see people fly through the air and fall in the ruffle of a roll or the crash of a hard landing. But in reality Aikido is about stillness.
The founder of the Martial Art, O Sensei, was a tiny Japanese man. There is some wonderful film footage of him, old and white haired, being attacked by his students. These rather large young men come rushing at him full bore. With hardly a flick of the wrist he sends them flying through the air and crashing to the ground.
Sunset Distortion Copyleft 2002
I find a lot of designers think lighting is about writing light cues. Sure that is what we do and without them the house lights would never go down and there would never be a blackout at the end of the piece. The writing of light cues is integral to the work of a lighting designer, but to say that is what lighting is about is like saying the point of writing is constructing a plot. Sure this is necessary, even if the plot is no plot, but it is hardly the core essence of the written word.
There was a line from Cupid and Psyche, “It is in the silence that the gods reveal themselves.” So too is it in the stillness that the light reveals itself. Watching a sun set is a gloriously beautiful thing. Growing up on the West Coast we would get these amazing sun sets over the water, the sun falling behind the Golden Gate Bridge in midsummer, or behind the Marin headlands in the winter. I strongly recommend this experience to anyone with a passing interest in light.
There is a moment in every sunset, where the pace at which the sun is falling increases and then, just before it goes away, it appears to stop. Time stands still. The last sliver of sunlight clutching the horizon.
And then gone.
It is in that moment of stillness that the sun reveals all its secrets. It whispers them out over its long extended fingers, and if you are very very quiet, you might just hear a little. The trees understand. Like John Cage they stand there silent and still, waiting to hear the grand symphony of the setting sun.
