Milton Trager used to say, “My work is a nothing thing. It is just a feeling. We cannot achieve it by trying to force some physical condition into being.”
Once when I was assisting him, after his demonstration he sent everyone off to do this nothing thing. As he observed the students trying to do nothing, he called over to one table across the room and said, “No, no, what you are doing is a nothing nothing. I am talking about a something nothing.” This comment sent me on a years-long tailspin trying to figure out when nothing is really nothing and when it is something. Then I recalled him saying just as often, “You cannot figure it out, so don’t try. Just go with it.” After that, the quandary quickly resolved, and I thereafter thought nothing (not “not something”) further about it.
However, I recently discovered this definition of “nothing” in my archives (if “archive” is the right word for boxes full of papers to be sorted out–probably not by me–later). I reread it with the same keenness (and no small touch of dizziness and nausea) that I experienced when I first encountered it. It occurs to me that it may be of some help who are themselves trying to figure out the distinctions–obviously so important to Milton–between “nothing,” “nothing nothing,” and “something nothing.” There may be nothing more important for us to grips with as nothing. I offer up this philosophical discussion to that end, and I, for one, can positively attest to the fact that upon reading and rereading it I have truly come to understand nothing.
Read the rest of the article at the US Trager Association website.