The World Needs Nothing..

Sometimes you need a little “nothingness” in your life.

In Buddhism, nothingness does not simply mean the absence of things. It points more toward emptiness: a state in which we become aware that our thoughts, emotions, and all phenomena are not fixed or permanent. Through meditation, this can bring clarity, stillness, and freedom.

It is not just about becoming empty. It is about insight and liberation.

When I wrote Nothing Needs the World, I was looking at the world, including my own inner world, and I felt that maybe we all need a little more stillness. A little more space. A little more nothingness.

Room to think.
Room to contemplate.
Room to let thoughts and emotions land where they should.

There is so much noise around us. News, opinions, messages, plans, grief, ambition, worry, the little storms in our own heads. Sometimes I feel like we are all constantly asked to respond, to decide, to produce, to be visible, to be available. And then there is water, which somehow does not ask for that.

Water moves, but it does not rush in the same way we do. It holds reflection and distortion at the same time. It can be completely calm and still be full of movement underneath. I think that is part of why this album had to be recorded on De Vouw, my 1951 Dutch sailboat. The boat became a place where sound and silence could both exist together.

Nothing Needs the World became one of the leading songs on Current, most central to the album. It carries the feeling of being on the water, not as an escape from the world, but as a way to listen to it more deeply.

The song features sounds from the reeds and birds on Lake Braassem and Paddegat, as well as waves gently bumping against the mahogany hull of De Vouw. These are not decorative sounds to me. They are part of the composition. They are part of the atmosphere in which the song came into being.

Adinda Meertins plays bass on a quiet stretch of the southern part of Lake Braassem. Her sound has such a deep, wooden stillness to it, almost like the boat itself is breathing along. Hermine Deurloo recorded multiple harmonica lines that somehow fit together like puzzle pieces. The harmonica feels like air moving through the track, sometimes close, sometimes distant, almost like a memory.

I love that the song is built from these delicate layers. Voice, harmonica, bass, water, reeds, birds, boat sounds. Nothing is trying to overpower anything else. Everything is listening to everything.

The idea that nothingness is not empty, but a place of rest. A place before or after the storm. A place where we remember that not everything needs to be held, solved, explained, or carried.

Nothing needs the world
Silence in our hearts
Nothing needs the world
Quiet, before, the storm is ending

There is a line in the song that keeps returning to me:

Nothing needs the world, more than nothing.

I don’t know if I can fully explain that line, and maybe I don’t want to. Some lyrics arrive before the mind has completely understood them. But to me, it feels like a little paradox. The idea that even emptiness is shaped by the world around it. That stillness is not separate from life. That silence only becomes silence because of everything it holds.

There is also a little echo in this song of The Beatles’ Across the Universe, with that famous line, “Nothing’s gonna change my world.” That song has always felt connected to a kind of spiritual surrender, partly through its reference to the Sanskrit mantra Jai Guru Deva Om. I was not trying to quote The Beatles directly, but I do feel close to that idea: the world keeps moving, shifting, demanding, breaking open, and still there can be a place inside that remains quiet. Not untouched exactly, but spacious. A place where nothing has to be pushed or pulled for a moment.

As part of this post, I am sharing two videos.

The first is an excerpt from my conversation with Leah Roseman on Conversations with Musicians with Leah Roseman Substack In this interview, I talk a little more about the making of Current, the boat, the water, and how this whole project came together. Check out the full interview here: www.leahroseman.com/episodes/vivienne-aerts or on her Substack post.

Leah Roseman does such an amazing job interviewing musicians from all parts of the world, and she is an amazing musician herself. I totally recommend checking out her website and socials.

The second video is a preview from the documentary. In this moment, I am sitting on De Vouw, looking out over the water. When I put on the headphones, you hear Nothing Needs the World. I love this fragment because it captures something I find hard to put into words: the feeling of listening while being surrounded by the place where the music came from.

This is also what I hope the song gives you.

A little space.
A little breath.
A little moment where nothing has to be fixed.
A little quiet before, or after, the storm.

Nothing Needs the World features Hermine Deurloo on harmonica and Adinda Meertins on bass.

This single will be officially presented on Bandcamp on June 12. It will be the first single from my upcoming album Current, coming out June 26.

I hope you listen somewhere quiet.

Watch the whole interview with Leah & follow on her Substack:

Vivienne Aerts on “Current”, Mindfulness, Jazz and Psychology