Tabula Rasa and Thoughts on a New Guitar Case

It was inevitable. After lug­ging my father’s hand-me-down Yamaha around for over a decade, the clasps on my belea­guered gui­tar case snapped and I had to buy a new one. This case car­ried my instru­ment to my very first prac­tice eleven years ago. It was there for my first chord (A), my first Beatles song (Hey Jude), and my first live per­for­mance with Izzie (the Court House steps dur­ing Pioneer Festival; opened with Neil Young and closed with Taylor Swift). 

It was cov­ered in stick­ers, a ver­i­ta­ble road map of my last decade, places I’ve vis­it­ed (Daufuskie Island, New Smyrna Beach, Glacier National Park), con­certs I’ve rocked (Stevie Nicks, Jason Isbell, The Chicks), and a peek into my belief sys­tem (vote Amy McGrath, Anyone But Trump 2016, Abortion Access Saves Lives). 

So it was with a heavy heart that I threw the case out. The new one is sleek and clean and … very, very bare. I imme­di­ate­ly felt a need to cov­er it as quick­ly as pos­si­ble, evi­dence of a life lived. But why? 

Tabula Rasa, or blank slate, refers specif­i­cal­ly to a cleared table, or a scraped tablet. There is beau­ty in the blank slate, grace in emptiness. 

Why do I feel so drawn to fill­ing every­thing so quick­ly? My mind with thoughts, my bel­ly with food, my house with stuff, my cal­en­dar with hap­pen­ings? Why is my default to reach for my phone the moment my mind qui­ets? Why must I cre­ate elab­o­rate sto­ries in my mind about every­thing and every­one around me instead of sim­ply observ­ing? What does full prove? We can­not fill an emo­tion­al hole with things or expe­ri­ences or oth­er peo­ple. Sometimes we just need to sit with our feelings. 

So we clear the tables in our life, mak­ing a clean sweep.

Miles Davis famous­ly said that the notes we don’t play mat­ter as much as the ones we do. The Japanese art direc­tive of yohaku no bi cel­e­brates the con­scious choice of emp­ty space in paint­ing, land­scap­ing, and archi­tec­ture. In yog­ic breath­work, we cel­e­brate the kumb­ha­ka, the tiny gap that nat­u­ral­ly exists between the inhale and the exhale, and too often goes unno­ticed. The Zen Buddhists see the idea of empti­ness as the ulti­mate real­i­ty, not a lack of but instead infi­nite potentiality.

It’s the in-between moments when we are most present, most alive, the void giv­ing form to the solid. 

This I know. I’m hold­ing off on dec­o­rat­ing my new instru­ment case, lean­ing into the idea that a hole and can also be whole.