Listen to the Clock Tick

Right now, wherever you are, there is a sound you are ignoring.

It could be the hum of the AC, the whirring of your computer, or the sound of traffic off in the distance.

I want you to take the next five seconds and find that sound.

Today, I want to invite you into my perspective of the world — one seen through the lens of a podium.

Most people think my job as a conductor is to be a manager of sound; to wave my arms around and provoke noise from my musicians. In my view, however, gesticulation is secondary, and my primary role is as a manager of silence. I am responsible for the ‘rests’ — the spaces between notes, pieces, and people.

When I was first learning how to conduct, my teacher gave me a simple instruction: "Before beginning a piece of music, listen to the clock tick."

For years, I thought that simply meant waiting until the room was dead silent. What I eventually realized was that this had nothing to do with the external environment and had everything to do with my internal stillness. I had to learn how to take all this chaotic energy and transform it into a singular, silent moment before I could ever hope to lead anyone else.

On the podium, I am a conduit of energy. I absorb the energies of the audience, the composer, the musicians, and the music itself. I have to fuse these disparate forces and project them back out in a musical expression using nothing more than silent gestures.

But here’s the secret: that transfer is only possible if the conduit (me) is empty.

The moment I allow internal noise — ego, self-doubt, or even the thought, “This is going well!” — to fill that space, the conduit clogs. I stop being a bridge and start being a barrier.

In essence, I muck it up for everyone.

In a rehearsal, what I’m actually chasing is attention. My job is to bring every individual in the room to a single, focused moment in time so that we can make something beautiful. But I see the struggle in my musicians, from high school students to seasoned professionals.

They are distracted.
They are restless.

And I see that same restlessness in the world around me.

We are all biological conduits, taking in the energy from the world around us, mixing it with our own, and sending it back out. But today, many of us are clogged by excessive inputs. We’ve started viewing conscious thought as a laborious feat, so we’ve abdicated our silence to a cacophony of convenience.

A 2014 study by Timothy Wilson at the University of Virginia found that we would rather self-administer an electric shock than be left alone with our thoughts for ten minutes.

We haven’t just lost our appreciation for silence; we’ve lost our tolerance for it.

By eliminating the ‘rests’ in our lives, we are eroding our capacity to be present. We think the beauty of life is in the "notes" (the achievements, the noise, the input). But as Mozart suggested, music is not in the notes, but in the silence between.

Gustav Mahler, the great Romantic era composer, understood this. He instructed five minutes of silence between the first and second movements of his famous Resurrection Symphony. He knew that without that space, the audience would have no room to house the experience they just had. There would be no threshold to step across into what’s next. He saw silence as the space between an experience and its meaning.

Music is an impermanent gift. It cannot be stashed away; it must be created and recreated in every moment. Right now, our society is in a messy rehearsal. Technology is ramping up, the noise is getting louder, and we’re all playing different instruments and songs.

In performance, we can’t always stop and start over. We train ourselves how to bring the music back into focus, using whatever sent the ship awry as part of the journey. And we do so by finding the beat, breathing together, and listening louder than we sing.

If we want to answer the complex problems of our time, we cannot do it as scattered, distracted individuals. We must, as musicians do, assume our individual responsibilities to the music we collectively make.

If we want to send something beautiful back into the world, we must refuse to be filled with endless, mindless input and instead, prioritize the silence that allows us to connect.

To connect to ourselves, to others, and to the world around us.

We must listen to the clock tick.

Until next time, live uninterrupted.

~Coleman