We owe a lot to nothing. Consider the Hole: it is nothing,
I know, but let us extrapolate the positive use of negative space.
That which is not, is an integral part of the physical and metaphysical
world. A hole is something that is not there. It is a not-thing.
Take away something and a hole will take its place. Holes permit
an extensive array of possibilities.
Contrary to popular folk wisdom, we do need a hole in our head;
in fact we need several thousand of them. Besides the pores in
our skin, we need apertures through which to eat, hear, breath,
and discharge waste. Our bodies are covered with holes to provide
the input and output we need to survive. However, studies prove
that man-made holes in human beings can cause death. The standard
method of mammalian reproduction involves, ultimately, tubes and
holes. A human being is, essentially, a tube. Food goes in one
end and what we don't need comes out the other end. We need a
hole to get into this world and we're put into a hole when we
leave it.
Without the hole we couldn't have a tunnel. There wouldn't have
been cavemen. Sex might not be as much fun. You wouldn't be able
to put a ring on your finger. We wouldn't have wells. Guys wouldn't
be able to get beer out of a can. We wouldn't be able to put gas
in our cars. There would be no way to get air into your tires.
The hole allows us to walk through walls. It even permits us to
see through walls. Without holes we wouldn't be able to get our
T-shirts or sneakers on. Without a hole there would be no way
to flush your toilet. It'd be hard to drain the bathtub too. We
might not have a zero. A hole is a good thing to have.
You've probably seen donut holes sold down at your local bakery.
These are misnamed because they are really the dough that was
removed to create the hole. The hole is actually sold along with
the donut.
Nothing is something that cannot be taken away. One can have nothing
but never own it. In sculpture, the part that is not there is
negative space. Some thing is removed in order to get no thing.
It is the shape of that negative space that we are to focus our
attention on. In music, the part that is not sound is the space.
Without those spaces between the sounds, music would not exist.
Music is sound separated by no sound. Take out the spaces and
you get noise. It is the negative space in the bodies of musical
instruments that allow their sounds to be amplified. The music
emanates from sound holes.
Now I contradict myself. There is no such thing as nothing. Nature
abhors a vacuum. Even outer space a complete vacuum does not exist.
The Not-space is always full of something. Whatever was taken
away to create a negative space had to be put somewhere. Something
then rushes in to fill that negative space; here on Earth, usually
air. We're merely rearranging things. A thing that is "destroyed"
to create a void is merely converted to energy and different kinds
of molecules. In the universe there is no net loss.
© Martin Scherer. Webmaster Martin Scherer. Last update 9/98. E-mail: mscherer@tesserak.net