play what's not there
#124
Hello you,
It's Friday, isn't it? Time's funny that way, folding in upon itself until you look up and realise another week has passed. These notes, fragments of musings and ponderings, often begin on Monday, and I work on them throughout the week. Things start to take shape on Thursday afternoon, which is what I am doing right now as I type this. These notes and musings happen in different spaces, in different media, and under varying conditions. There are notes on index cards all around me right now.
But just as often, these musings can take place on my microblog, on my social media feeds here and here, and even occasionally here.
How's the world treating you? No, really, how is it? How are you navigating the chaos, inflated prices, and existential crises that seem to crop up every few days? I've been thinking about selling my car, going completely electric, and using public transport. This is not for economic reasons or bleeding-heart climate control issues. No, this is more about slowing down the rush of life. Slow enough to taste the moment, to recognise the nuances in the everyday, to wrap myself up in rumination.
I finally feel ready to seriously work on my next book, so slowing down is not just a desire; it's a necessity. By the way, have you been enjoying reading the expanded notes as much as I've been enjoying writing them? They're my playground. I've found freedom in the lyric essay, where prose dances with poetry and thoughts meander through intertextuality like Virginia Woolf walking the cobbled streets of Bloomsbury. With hyperlinks, I get to play the White Rabbit and lead you down corridors and around corners you maybe haven't anticipated.
You see, moving these notes to Friday wasn't a trivial choice. It's your weekend reading, a companion to your cup of coffee or glass of wine. What can be better than exploring interconnected worlds while sipping on something comforting?
Tell me about you. What pockets of existence have you been peering into? As Zadie Smith says, "Attention is a form of prayer." So, what or who has been worthy of your devotion?
Genuine and sincere
…are my current lodestars, helping me to align with a greater cosmic truth about myself. "I study myself more than any other subject. That is my metaphysics, that is my physics.” And what is it to be genuine and sincere but to engage in this eternal dance of self-examination?
"Living is a form of not being sure, not knowing what next or how. The moment you know how, you begin to die a little.” But isn't this the crux of it? To be genuine and sincere is to stand on the precipice of not knowing, to make peace with the tension of being imperfectly, wholly myself.
The conversations i’m having with myself expand beyond the limits of skin and bone and into the space around me, into the lives of the people i touch, into the ground i walk upon, and into the air i breathe. It’s in the way my body responds to a sunset, eyes reflecting the mingling hues of red and gold; it’s in the way i listen—truly listen to the words of another, trying to keep my mind clear of judgement.
It’s in the way i embrace my own flawed, messy existence.
a sliver of silence
"Be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and try to love the questions themselves, like locked rooms and like books that are now written in a very foreign tongue. Do not now seek the answers, which cannot be given you because you would not be able to live them. And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer." ― Rainer Maria Rilke
Rilke tells us to "live the questions," but sometimes I wonder if it's not about living the gaps between them as well.
50,000 to 70,000 thoughts a day. Numbers so large they blur into abstraction. In a fraction of a second, there's a pause and the chatter ceases.
Who am I in that gap?
It's a question that tickles the edges of spirituality, philosophy, and neuroscience. Descartes told us, "Cogito, ergo sum." I think, therefore I am. But what about when we don't think? Are we less 'us'? Or perhaps more?
Virginia Woolf called these interstitial moments "moments of being." Glimpses of unfiltered reality, a backdrop so often obscured by the "cotton wool" of everyday life. Are these gaps our 'moments of being,' or perhaps 'moments of becoming’?
moments
the silence in a song
the quiet before the storm
the unsaid "but" lingering at the end of a sentence
the hollow space inside a bell
the emptiness that makes a room a room
In meditation, the goal isn't thoughtlessness but a heightened awareness of thoughts, as they pass through your mind like a fast flowing river. The "I" that watches the thoughts is like a bird perched high above, witnessing but not getting entangled. But what are we without our thoughts? Is it a barren land or fertile soil—tabula rasa or a canvass splashed with invisible ink? In poetry, the space between words, the line breaks, the stanzas—all breathe life into the poem. Likewise, the "I" between thoughts is not a vacuum but charged space, full of potential and gravity, like dark matter in the universe.
Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones says, "First thoughts have tremendous energy. The internal censor usually squelches them, so we live in the realm of second and third thoughts, thoughts on thought, twice and three times removed from the direct connection of the first fresh flash.”
So, who am I between two thoughts?
A seeker in a landscape of fleeting certainties, perhaps? A hiker in a canyon echoing with the shouts of my own queries and convictions, pausing for a drink of stillness? A reader flipping through the pages of an unwritten book, fingers tingling at the touch of invisible ink?
In that gap, I am both more and less myself—like a note in a melody, defined as much by the silence that surrounds it as by its own sonic signature. There, in that gap, I am the unspoken word, the unpainted canvas, the unwritten poem. I am all potential and no form; I am the gaze that makes the sky more than just weather.
That's me. Now, who are YOU between two thoughts?
ingredients for an indifferent life
1. Routine without purpose
2. Choices made out of convenience
3. A job that pays the bills but starves the soul
4. Relationships maintained out of habit, not joy or love
5. Activities that are time-fillers, not life-fillers
"The goal of life is to make your heartbeat match the beat of the universe, to match your nature with nature." Joseph Campbell
aligning one's heartbeat with the universe
I sit at my window, eyes trailing a falling leaf, twirling in descent. It spirals towards the ground, tracing invisible currents of air, as if seeking an exact spot to land—a marriage of its nature with Nature. I wonder if I’m any different from this leaf. I feel the beat of my heart, a rhythm, syncopated with thought, emotion, every beat an existential question posed to the universe.
my coffee cup is empty
i pause for a moment
i tap my finger and
begin humming a tune
unwittingly, i’m
vibing with the universe
Waves crash on a distant shore; the rustle of a newspaper on a Sunday morning; a baby’s first cry—these are the beats that make up the rhythm of existence. A chaotic symphony, yet if you listen carefully, perhaps you’ll hear the undertones of harmony.
Harmony. Synchronicity. Carl Jung called it "meaningful coincidence," as if the cosmos has a narrative structure, footnotes included, just waiting to be read. We find these syncs, these winks from the universe, and they're like bookmarks, aren't they? We place them carefully along the margins of our lives, hoping they will help us make sense of it all.
🎧 Listen: Synchronicity I - The Police
The Book of Changes, the I Ching, speaks of synchronicity as a dance—each step meaningful yet guided by an unseen hand, unfolding the 'eternal now.' (I Ching, Hexagram 55)
My pen moves across paper—each word, a beat. Yet, between the words, the pauses, the white space—more rhythm. Like the pregnant pause in a Miles Davis trumpet solo, the gap is as much a part of the music as the notes themselves. "Don't play what's there, play what's not there," Davis said. It’s these gaps that let the universe seep in, a cosmic fill-in-the-blank where the audience, the reader, you, complete the narrative.
Is it a form of Yūgen? That untranslatable Japanese term that speaks to the profound grace and subtlety of things. A sunset partially obscured by clouds, the melancholy grace of an autumn leaf. Yūgen whispers: "The mystery lies in the ordinary."
List of meaningful coincidences:
The moment you stumble upon a forgotten book that answers the question you've been wrestling with.
Meeting an old friend in a city neither of you lives in—just as you were thinking of them.
The uncanny resemblance between a dream you had and a news story you read the next morning.
Add your own meaningful coincidences to the list.
Synchronising our heartbeat with that of the universe is perhaps not a singular moment of realisation; it's an unfolding, a continual adjustment, a staying in tune. The beat changes, sometimes fast, sometimes slow, but always alive, a living pulse that we dance to, knowingly or not.
Snap your fingers. Drum on the table. Feel your heartbeat. You’re composing, and the universe is your collaborator.
What are we but transient beings caught in a perpetual dance of becoming? Our beats align and misalign in a chaotic yet beautiful cadence. We're both the musician and the listener, the writer and the reader, each of us a stave in a cosmic score.
To match your heartbeat with the universe is to listen intently, to move gracefully, to pause thoughtfully—it's to write your own lyric in the grand essay of existence. Are you in tune?
moments:
Realising i no longer want to allow myself to be hemmed in by other people’s fears, doubts, and opinions
Finding the space i fit in as writer, that place where the lyric essay, prose poem, and verse meet makes me feel all warm and fuzzy inside
Committing to living a life of simplicity, reflection, contemplation, thoughts, and ideas
Watching Sinatra The Musical at the Birmingham Repertory Theatre and getting to see my best mate Zoli play bass was a treat. I never knew how much of Frank was in this song. I also never knew how many women he was into.
Seeing Ricky and Julie for the first time in 28 years and picking up where we left off as if time had folded in on itself and brought us right back to Germany circa 1994/95
Contemplating the burden of self-awareness. We possess this remarkable ability to imagine alternative realities. It feels like a gift, but can easily be a burden as it often puts us at odds with who we are at any given moment
Remembering to stay focused on the process and not be distracted by the mind noise that tries to tell you you’re failing at this
Realising i love writing this newsletter and microblogging, but that i also need to make space to write ebooks
Started using Squaddy to track my workouts and stumbled upon the Golden Era Workout Club who have a bunch of workouts from the legends of bodybuilding. This week I did Franco Columbu’s workouts. I haven’t had a “pump” like this in years
Arriving at this place today, writing this issue, in this way, this is my favourite issue to date. I feel like i have arrived at what and how i want this newsletter/blog thing to be
recommendations:
if you’re into weightlifting, strength training, powerlifting, bodybuilding, or circuit training and you’re looking for a motivational way to track your workouts, i highly recommend Squaddy. there is a free version. Look me up
i love listening to the radio from time to time. my favourite digital radio app used to be radio garden until they blocked folks living the UK from listening to music outside of the country. my new favourite app is triode
what do you use for your digital note-taking? if you’re using anything other than reflect.app you are missing out on the best note-taking app on the market
two books of lyric essays that i highly recommend are ghost are just strangers who know how to knock by hillary leftwich and making the tongue dry by jen soriano
spend some time contemplating this: in five years time, what do you REALLY want to be doing?
watch wheel of time, season 2. i initially abandon the show after a few episodes of season 1. But then I gave it another go and i'm glad i did. For what it is (an adaptation) it's a decent series. i would recommend it to folks who are fans of high fantasy TV shows. of course, it will never be as good as robert jordan’s epic 15 novels series
postscript
I’m on a high right now as I wind down for the close. It’s 11:29AM. I’ve been working on this since 6:00AM. No break, except to make a quick protein shake. I am very pleased with what this space is becoming. I’m working hard to create an integrated experience between my microblog and this newsletter, which i’m also calling my blog because that’s what Substack feels like. It’s a hybrid publication. It lives on the web like a blog, and it gets delivered to your inbox like an email newsletter. The best of both worlds.
I want to thank you for reading. I really appreciate your comments and emails. It's amazing and interesting that we're all in this together, so let’s collaborate in small and big ways. What are your thoughts? You can leave me a comment here or simply hit reply to this email and we can continue the conversation one to one.
If you’re moved to, after you read this, send me a picture of your view of the world. I love a good snapshot. We should bring back the snapshot!
No matter where you are, may you feel safe, held, and loved no matter what you're going through. Let yourself listen to more stories, to more people, and to the barefoot side of yourself. Thanks for coming along with me on this trip. See you next week.
Clay
Thanks for sharing another great article 😎