The story of An Illustrated Silence

I see and almost hear the following definition in the light and atmosphere seeping between and within and possibly from the trees in Anne's photograph.

I had an image of a painter's canvas before a painting begins. It's blank. After the painting is complete, no blank canvas remains. It is illustrated. Previously and no longer blank, it is now an illustration.

What does silence mean to me in the context of the work of Mark and I?  All our music arises from and returns to it. Like the cycle of nature. Like the trees. There may be glimpses of silence within a piece, within a rest or a pause. But to me, with our work, there is something else masked as silence. I sense it as a depth of emotion. A very deep and dark well of source, of expression; of communication. Something or some place so deep as to be silent. But not bereft. In the light prism, a result of white isn't the color white, it's not the lack of a color; it's the presence of all colors. So it is with this silence: it is not a lack of something, but a massed presence. Our silence is a deep, dark place from whence all our music flows. In this space, the silence is not only the source of the music, but also represents a blank canvas. We then illustrate the canvas, much as the artist with his painting. Yet we are not covering the silence as the painter covers the canvas. We allow the silence to remain, to breathe, to be as much a part of the music as the music itself. The sound and the silence hang suspended delicately in the air like gossamer, like lace with no gravity, fully in three dimensions. The voids in the lace may represent the silence; the very glue and the force that holds together the fabric of the lace; without which no lace would exist or be possible. So it is with our silence. That silence, that source, is ours to illustrate. In a way that I don't hear with other music in other projects. And yet the very thing that we are illustrating is itself the source of the illustration. A cycle in nature. What we have created, thru our connection, thru our souls, thru our unique voices, thru our music, is not an illustration. The music begins from it, and returns to it. It is held together by it; it is at once the tabula rasa and the raison d'etre.

It is not an illustration.

It is not silence.

It is... an illustrated silence.

- Kevin Kastning
October 2012