Notes from Ben

I’m excited about sharing creativity again this year. Putting stuff out into the world always feels good and always improves someone’s life somewhere, at some point in time.

I know a pianist who plays in a Spanish rock band. The band constantly creates and puts out new music, and at the same time, he occasionally puts out personal albums of his own. I stumbled upon his latest in Spotify recently and it inspired me enormously with my piano playing – there are some beautiful songs. I was so glad he’d published this work. Perhaps he needn’t have bothered? But he did, and it enhanced my life a few months down the line.

This is a note to self – keep bothering, keep sharing. It’s nice to put one’s work out there, and someone else will probably enjoy it somewhere, sometime too.

In this post are four of the photographs that have made me most happy in the last few months. Most snatched with the phone. More will appear here and @notesfromben on Instagram.

Monday in the Mountains, Sierra de Madrid

Windscreen, trees, rain, and Jazz trio on the radio

Trees in the lamplight — Gold-leaf trees in the lamplight

I saw this block of sunshine on the carpet in my daughter’s room and I knew I had to lie down in it and do nothing but sunbathe for a while. Do nothing.

I’ve noticed how hard I find it to leave spaces of nothing recently. I have a moment to myself, and I think… Netflix? Book? Play the piano? Read? Never ‘nothing time’. Zero Time. Zero input. The amount of inputs I have at my disposal is a wonder – the web, podcasts, Audible, Netflix, YouTube, blogs, books – so much to take in!

But it was in that bedroom that I remembered the wonder of nothingness a few nights back, while I was slouched at the end of the bed in the dark waiting for my daughter to fall asleep. No headphones in my ears, nothing to watch, nothing to read, just black nothing. I haven’t felt so wonderful in ages. So I resolved to leave more space for Zero Time.

I like Zero-input lunches on my own, where I just watch the other diners, and Zero-input walks – headphone free – just looking around. And Zero-input bedtimes, lying in the dark, waiting for sleep. Zero-input bus rides where I don’t look at Instagram, but at the world and my fellow passengers instead. These Zero-input moments are Zero Time, where I read, watch and listen to nothing, and reality washes its wonderful way in instead.