The secret is in the edges.
The secret is in the edges — where things meet — that’s where we find the relationships between things — how we perceive the nature of the relationships between things, that is, how we understand the nature of reality. Not in some esoteric sense, but in this very life. As Beuys said — the mystery is in the main station.
Once, as I was watching a performance of The Knee Plays by Robert Wilson, I was sitting in the back, student tickets, across the aisle from the soundboard. David Byrne came and sat next to the soundboard in the aisle, that is, next to me. As one scene transitioned into another I examined the outline of the performance — a pamphlet that displayed a series of schematic pictures of what was to go on stage — and I tried to figure out just what exactly was going on up there on the stage. After watching my confusion for a moment, Byrne leaned over, swished his pen back and forth over the pamphlet pictures, and said in Byrneian crispness, “Here we are…in between.”
So it is.
Bailey said something about that once — about edges, something about how the overall tone of an object can be fairly solid and even, without any real gradation, and it will still work spatially if the edges are right. That is, our sense of space and form depends greatly on the quality of the edges.