" "

Listening to a certain jazz trio here in Paris, for some reason, always leaves me excited about my work as a designer. Whether it's being completely fascinated by their kinaesthesia and how that relates to sign language, or mapping out the many ways one can play upright bass--the sounds you can achieve when you treat it like a drum, I always walk away with some inkling, some sort of new perspective.

During our dinner tonight after their set, I had a chance to talk with Ziggy, Jeff, and Christine about their work how they started so on and so forth. At one point during the dinner, Jeff and Christine stepped out, so I asked Ziggy, 'What is the hardest part of playing the guitar?' Now just so you can picture him, Ziggy is half French, a quarter Taiwanese, and a quarter African, elegantly dressed in a suit, hair slicked back, sporting a classic smile.

After he takes a sip of wine, he asks me why I want to know that, and I tell him that it's important to know the struggles that any creative person has to undergo because you appreciate their work that much more. So he tells me, "The hardest thing about playing the guitar is the silence. You see, guitar players don't need to stop playing to take a breath, they can fill the room with notes both complex and technically challenging, but the silence is the most important aspect." I asked him why, and he said "Silence is the only time when you can think of a sound, and use your imagination to fill it in. People in the crowd will hear silence, and they'll fill in whatever note or scale they want. If I keep playing really fast notes I get bored, the crowd gets bored. It's the silence that brings them back in. Jazz can't exist without the silence in between."

I had never thought to consider the silence.

So now you're wondering... why do I care, what is Matt talking about, this is weird... The merit here reveals itself when you consider the silence in design of cities, public spaces, even the home. What design allows for the crowd to fill in the space with their imagination?