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a calm presence - 4%
Season 6
(note: to read the original a calm presence Substack posting click here)
It’s Thursday November 27th, 2025, at about 10pm.
I’m sitting by a fireplace at our cottage in Duhamel Québec and I want to tell you a story called 4%.
When I turned 50 on December 3rd, 2009, I decided to take 50 days off from my work, which was not easy at the time. My goal was to sort through the many boxes of stuff in our basement: letters, sketches, notes, articles, posters, booklets and so on.
At the end of the 50 days I wrote a Facts and Arguments article, ‘I took 50 days of when I turned 50’ that published in the Globe and Mail on February 18, 2010 about how and why I got rid of 80% of my archives during those 50 days off.
Here are two excerpts from that article:
- I dug a hole in the snow and spent the next three hours burning the documents, page by page. Sometimes I would hesitate over an item but decided to see the process through. As paper transformed into ash, I internalized the voices and messages frozen in those documents. They will now die with me. I thanked the authors and my collaborators. This felt good and right. I smelled like a forest fire.
- I started composing music when I was 12 in North Bay and have been active in a number of cultural fields since, including music, arts administration, programming and event production. Like many people, I kept records of my work - photos, recordings, scores, correspondence, programs and essays. I'm not quite sure why I kept it all, but I figured one day I would know. Perhaps it was vanity, but more likely an act of self-preservation.
It's 16 years later now and I have no regrets.
In fact, as I turn 66 in a few days I’m about to get rid of another 80% or so of the remaining 20% of my archives which leaves me with about 4% of my original belongings and that feels just about right.
Why did I do it?
Mostly it’s because I don’t want to leave a mess for my family when I die but there’s another reason…
I’m currently taking a course called Zen and the Art of Saving the Planet(ZASP), which is a learning journey to nurture insight, compassion, community, and mindful action in service of the Earth, based on the work of Zen Master Thich Nhat Hanh and has been developed by the monks at Plum Village in France.
One of the course’s many teachings refers to the Diamond Sutra, a 9th century Mahāyāna Buddhist text that focuses on concepts of emptiness, reality and wisdom.
What caught my attention during the course, and made me think about my archives, was how the Diamond Sutra questions the notions of self (separation), of what it means to be human, of our relations with all living beings and of one’s life span. As I processed these teachings, I felt it was a good time to let go of non-essential things.
So, what did I get rid of and why?
Gone are my cassette and DAT tape collection of field recordings from the 1980’s and 1990’s. Many of these sounds are in my compositions but the rest have no value. I threw out some back in 2010 but it’s now time to let them all go as the tapes fall apart. I create a little ritual to thank the voices recorded before letting them go.
Gone are piles and piles of articles and essays about acoustic ecology, climate change, environmental art and so on. I don’t think I’ll ever get around to reading them, so I gave away those that had value and burned the rest.
Gone are documents and minutes from organizations
Published on 1 month ago