Walkie-Talkie #8 'Pay Attention to the Spaces in Between'

Dear friends,

Saturday, October 25, was a productive day, because Walkie-Talkie #8 was also recorded that afternoon, just after the two previous ones.

On my way back to the village, I continue talking about our habit of constantly dividing reality into smaller and smaller ‘parts’, and then thinking that by observing those parts we can understand what the whole means. A strange idea, once you start thinking about it even just a little.

I also talk about how we tend to isolate ‘things’ from the ‘background’ by drawing a line around them, both conceptually and visually, and how we then generally focus all our attention on what we consider to be a ‘thing’ or ‘object’. And how we neglect the background or the space between the ‘things’. Something that also became clear so often in my classes on observational drawing and painting.

This tendency means that we only perceive reality in part: we only pay attention to what we consider to be ‘things’ (which can also be events), while we often ignore the apparent emptiness and silence between the ‘things’.

Yet that is probably precisely where we can find new ideas, a new view of the world, and new ‘solutions’: in that ‘space between things’.

Thank you for joining me on this walk, and until the next episode,

All the best,

Filip

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