The spaces between

There’s a cinematic technique, well done by Woody Allen, wherein the camera is positioned at eye level, facing an open door with walls on either side of it. The frame is composed with the open door in the center. Two characters are having an unseen conversation in the rooms beyond the open door. The camera is fixed in place. The people take turns moving around. We can see them only when they cross from one side to the other in the rooms beyond the open door. Sometimes a character will stop dead in the middle of the doorway, profile to the camera, say something or gesture to the other person, who is unseen, and then continue moving through the doorway to join the other person on that side of the unseen rooms. That open doorway is the space between. A lot happens in there.

In design, negative space defines and frames the positive elements on the page. That negative space – what isn’t there – is the space between the other elements. It is the glue that holds the rest of the composition together. Controlling the white space between elements is an exacting measure of the designer.

Gerry used to say that life consists of Moments, and there are very few of them. That is why is it said that when you die, your whole life can flash before you: a very fast slide show of those few Moments. So what’s the rest of life all about?

Waiting.

Hoping.
Keeping busy.
Lolling.
Creating.
Destroying.
Planting.
Reaping.
Cleaning.
Practicing.
Moving.
Being still.
Doing what is expected.
Doing the unexpected.
Doing whatever it is you do to amuse yourself.
Doing what you shouldn’t be doing.
Interacting.
Being alone.
Enjoying.
Loathing.
Idling.
Enriching.
Learning.
Forgetting.
Procrastinating.
Social climbing.
Trying on clothes.
Being.
And all the rest of the gerunds. All of them.

White is the absence of color in the Additive System of color management, which applies to pigment. In this system, black is the combination of all color. But in the Subtractive System, which deals with light, the combination of all colors in the spectrum is white. It is chock full of everything light can be. The same is true of white space in our lives: it is the spaces between all the rest of what happens to us. That beautiful, fruitful white space illuminates everything around it. BTW, in the Subtractive system, the absence of color - the absence of light – is black.

Jesse’s first word after DaDa was “light”. THAT was a non-gerundive Moment.