The threatening weather

The vacuum

1. Space is like an empty room. It is described by the walls and it is occupied by the various objects. It doesn’t have any meaning without the confining margins and the identifying objects.

2. On the other hand things cannot exist without the space which makes room for them. Space is for objects the background opposite to which they appear and upon which they rely- 

3. Even if the objects seem to float in midair.

The chair

4. Even the vacuum is an object. It is a notion with its own importance and validity, and it can be represented by symbols.

5. For example a chair has always been a symbol of empty space or of an empty seat. At any given moment one who sits on the chair may go away, leaving behind empty space.

6. When one leaves the vacuum stays. When one returns the vacuum is one’s greatest achievement. Our absence is always more important than our presence.

The tuba

7. Musical instruments may incorporate harmony by construction. Their cavity is the place where the notes are born.

8. Music then can be unfolded in the hands of a good musician. A tuba is a musical tool thanks to which the artist becomes a creator.

9. Our bodies are like tubas. They contain air and vibrate, they melodically express their contents. And as musical instruments wear out, so our bodies become empty someday, left without the slightest movement.

The statue

10. A statue does not really need any limbs. It doesn’t even need to have a head. It exists in order to express what it implies, like a half-naked female body.

11. As the vacuum needs the margins which define it, so pleasure needs a thicket to be contained. Inside our bodies there is a small capsule filled with pleasure, ready to be broken so that the pleasure is released.

12. In that sense there is no body totally dressed or naked. Love is hiding inside the shell of a hermaphrodite snail.

The threatening weather

13. Thus the vacuum is at the same time emptiness and fullness, both the reception room and the rest ground.

14. It is a substance full of holes, in each of which a universe may fit. Someday when our life ends we will have to return all our favorite objects to the vacuum where they originally came from.

15. It’s like a clear day, sitting by the sea-side, looking at the sky, when suddenly we see a storm approaching from the horizon. Then we listen to the thunderclap of silence. It’s the threatening weather of the vacuum itself.

Painting: The threatening weather, Rene Magritte

7/22/2018