Silence in rehearsal today felt like a substance

We were working a quiet passage — the kind where the strings barely breathe — and at one cutoff the silence that landed was so dense I almost wanted to stop and admire it instead of continuing. The third clarinet has been waging her seat war with a kind of grim devotion, and yet in that pause none of it mattered. It's the closest I get to proof that what we do is real: an absence you can hold in your hands for three seconds.