Deliberate Stillness

I've always been fascinated by contrast. Issues of juxtaposition, proportion, and contour . Opacity. How things have meaning not only because of what they are, but also because of what they are not, and what they are surrounded by. This goes for phenomena in the visual, aural, and tactile realms. Mind objects as well.

Dark/light, heavy/light.

Cold/hot, wet/dry.

Don't get me started on sacred/profane. You can have your deities and eat them too.

They don't all have to be binaries and dualisms. It might seem like doing and not-doing are opposites, but really there is not-doing and then there's every other shade of action. Not-doing is just a point of reference.

What happens when you don't-do deliberately? Is it then absorbed into the realm of doing?

Deliberate stillness.

Apart from any implications or meanings, I just like the phrase.

It's a quality that I try to cultivate as a listener of music. Otherwise I create mental friction with the music that detracts from my ability to receive without distraction. I can't eliminate mental bias, but I can reduce. I'm still not sure if that's desirable though.

These thoughts gestated during a prolonged morning of sitting and just listening to a new record player I recently acquired. I rediscovered all these great vinyls in my collection that had been sitting dormant after my old record player broke. Errol Garner! Lester Bowie! Bessie Smith! Elvis Costello! Arthur Blythe! I traversed untold worlds and spacious galaxies from the comfort of my chair, which I carefully positioned to maximize my experience of the stereo image.

There was such a strong impulse to do, even as I listened. Read the paper, pay the bills, you name it. Instead, I sat, absorbed, and was absorbed.