Restraint

Oct 1 2019

The beauty of music

is in the the space between the notes.

The cleansing pause

where the sound is allowed to resonate

then fade gently away.

That moment of rest

when our every sense

is alert to what comes next.

The great vocalists

keep us waiting as well;

restraining themselves

as if toying with us,

longing to hear them give

full voice.

Their pent-up power held,

until the cathartic release

when they finally do let go.

I do not play

and cannot carry a note.

But I listen, and appreciate.

So, is this what makes us human?

Is it music

rather than fire, thumbs, or tools?

Not the cultures we inhabit

or the ability to learn,

moral reasoning

or the rational discourse of words?

Because we are not thinking creatures who feel

but feeling creatures who think.

And because

while we process words

a song enters directly into the brain

without mediation.

It touches our minds

fires our blood

irradiates down to the bone,

lighting us up

with a green shimmering glow.

Where its signal remains,

energized atoms

in a chain reaction

lifting us out of ourselves.

It's odd how this poem came about, because the one I intended to write never got written.

I was looking at some close-up photography, and one image was of a Praying Mantis.

I was struck by the elegance of this highly specialized insect.

I was struck by the fine detail of the natural world that we miss, even though we are surrounded by it, confined as we are to the limited order of magnitude we inhabit. It is only thanks to modern technology – the magnifying glass and microscope; lenses, telescopes, and cameras – that we have even been able to discover other worlds, to access orders of magnitude such as this one: all the multiple universes that exist parallel to ours, but hide in plain sight.

I thought of how we evaluate beauty: that is, as an aesthetic experience of something in isolation. And then how the real beauty of nature is not in objects such as this, but in the space between them: the complex ecosystems; the communities and webs of life; the interdependence that millions of years of evolution have endowed this delicately balanced biosphere. And how all this so amazes, awes, and humbles us. Science tends to be reductive, and so struggles when asked to understand the connections between things, rather than the things themselves.

In viewing this photo again, I can see that perhaps it was the dark monochrome background that brought this to mind: what a simplifying image of the natural world, as if these insects could exist as solitary creatures, in isolation from their environment.

The same applies to us, as well. We are not the “self-made men” of libertarian ideology. Rather, we evolved as social animals and exist in society. Without others, we not only fail to thrive, we die. And working in the other direction, we are also multiple: a walking ecosystem of our own, part of a community that includes all the microbes our bodies contain and carry. There are billions of these, living in our guts and on our skin; and who – unbelievably – number more cells than our own. It also appears that they influence us, gut microbes sending signals up the vagus nerve to the brain, perhaps influencing things like mood, satiety, and our immune systems. So not only are we not solitary, we also may not be the autonomous creatures we appear: neither our consciousness nor agency are as absolute as we have always flattered ourselves.

Anyway, the analogy that immediately came to me was music. Because I find its greatest power in the space between the notes: the space for imagination and anticipation, the self-restraint that makes less more. The music I prefer is slow, spare, and under-produced. Minimalist. It does not inundate with sound. It requires a certain engagement and investment on the part of the listener.

The great jazz vocalists are especially good at this. I think of Billy Holiday, whose laconic style sounds effortless, and whose power you are sure of, but is held back. You listen just waiting for her to let go, and in the meantime are mesmerized by the authenticity and suffering she conveys.

I think the strength of good poetry is similar. Because in poetry, less is almost always more. And ideally, a reader will have her own imagery, meaning, and memory triggered by the words, filling in and expanding out. And because poetry is improved by self-restraint: when the author is comfortable with ambiguity, trusts the reader to do some of the work. The less said, the better. I sometimes think every poem aspires to be a Haiku, distilled down to its essence.

So this poem began by writing about the space between the notes. I never got to the Praying Mantis. I never got to the part about the beauty of nature that is not in its beautiful creatures and plants, but in the space between them, the living matrix in which they exist.