When I was making this blog I fidgeted around a lot with the style, trying to make it look pretty but I just couldn’t get it right. Until I realized that what makes a lot of websites pretty are the blank spaces.

This is, in fact, true for almost all art forms. All good movies have those moments of stillness, all good conversations have those long spaces, most paintings have patches of featureless color, all novels have moments of long contemplation.

Maybe we should have some of this in life as well, small pauses, to make it more beautiful.

I was at the BSO concert just a couple of days ago. I don’t really get classical music, though I’m trying to.

After the first performance the audience was applauding, and then the guest pianist sat down and started playing a Nocture by Chopin. The hall went silent, and I understood the meaning of the world mesmerizing.

I know this song by heart. The song is made as much of the notes as the spaces between them. As each note fades, you achingly wait for the next to emerge from the silence, some fast some slow, whimsically, from the stillness of the night.

There is a moment towards the end when you’re sad because you know the song is about to end soon, there is a small flicker, a few pauses and then the last few notes stretch endlessly into an eternity.

Mesmerizing.