Nothing is ever nothing at all

Early one day recently I posted a link to a clip on YouTube from Blackadder 4. It was the one called “I Spy” and related to Blackadder and Baldrick playing I Spy which started thus:-
Blackadder: "I spy with my bored little eye something beginning with ‘T’."
Baldrick: "Breakfast. My breakfast always begins with tea. Then I have a little sausage. Then a boiled egg with some soldiers."

Some hours passed by and then, quite unwittingly I had 2 boiled eggs for lunch – with soldiers! I posted about making this discovery as well, by saying:- "Was this self-persuasion, self-induction or something even a little deeper? Or perhaps nothing at all?" And then I replied to myself – "No! NOTHING is EVER Nothing At All"

This got me thinking about how much there is in that phrase –
"Nothing is ever Nothing at All"

First up I looked on Google –
There was nothing specific, just a lot of arrows pointing to Ronan Keating’s song "Nothing At All".
Then I found a reference to Canon Henry Scott-Holland (1847-1918), Canon of St Paul’s Cathedral. He is most well known for ‘The King of Terrors’, a sermon on death, that starts:- "Death is nothing at all. I have only slipped away into the next room."
Next, I remembered someone once saying that in Mozart’s compositions EVERY note has a purpose, and that no note he ever wrote could be deemed as "Nothing at All" or insignificant, without significance. Here, I felt, I was getting warmer to the argument of "Nothing is ever nothing at all".

Then I looked at the ambiguity between saying "Nothing is ever Nothing at All" and "Nothing is Never Nothing at All". It’s one of those phrases where emphasis on each of the words is key, and the tone of voice in which it is phrased also changes the meaning around the pivot of 'EVER' and 'NEVER'.

So, is "Nothing At All" an entity here, an argument where No Thing has a different meaning from Nothing. Is it like Disease – which is dis-ease? Or is it more like seminate and disseminate? And there’s also "Never", which is meant as "not ever".

This is all rather like the linguistic argument I propounded in the preface of "Don’t Think of a Black Cat" – where I took Shakespeare’s "To Be or not To Be – that is the question" and applied it loosely to the NLP presupposition "The Map is not the Territory" (where the ambiguities around the verb To Be are exposed). The Map is only a partial representation of how to navigate the territory – it’s not the reality of the Territory. I’ve done something stupid doesn’t mean I AM stupid. In the end I concluded that "If To Be is not To Be, then is THAT the question?" Whereupon at least one much respected friend and colleague who was totally baffled, summed up the whole book as "That kind of stuff leaves me stone cold I’m afraid. Does absolutely nothing for me."

So what does it really mean, "Nothing is ever nothing at all"?

You know when you are in a conversation and the person starts to say something and then stops. We might say, "What were you about to say?" and often their response is "Oh...no, it doesn’t matter..." or "Oh, it’s nothing." We all have that unconscious knowledge that it DOES matter, but there is something in their conscious mind holding back the saying of it. It may be they are still grasping at being able to express it properly – or rather, express it in a way that they feel might be best appropriate for us, or for the current circumstances – or rather express it in a way that still hides their true intent – or rather.....and so on. I find there’s a really useful conversational tool that allows them to keep that reticence and yet also allows them to express themselves in a way satisfactory to them. It is to invite them to say it metaphorically. It means they are opening up, and in a way that is not the black-and-white unshadedness of abrupt bluntness.
Or perhaps their use of ‘Nothing At All’ is actually a metaphor in their unconscious language for "I’ve placed what I really want to say behind a curtain – so you can’t see it" in a magician’s-style ‘sleight of thought’. By responding metaphorically both you and they are now communicating at an unconscious level far more than consciously. And the significance of that unconscious communication is all bound up within ‘Nothing At All’.

So, nothing IS EVER nothing at all.
• Every note in Mozart’s compositions has significance. Every note has a relationship with the other notes and with the silences that surround those notes. The very meaning of his music EXISTS in the often conscious nothingness of its appearance.
• Not many things may EXIST in a vacuum but a vacuum has properties, and therefore a vacuum is not "nothing" but is a relative state of nothingness. It does have EXISTENCE.
• In Ronan Keating’s song, "You say it best when you say nothing at all" - the implication is that unconsciously you express yourself to me in the most significant way without the need for words. And that the meaning of your expression EXISTS in that "Nothing At All".
• Canon Henry Scott-Holland’s "Death is nothing at all", in my perception, alludes only to the non-existence of a state of aliveness and not to a closure of the timeless nature of EXISTING. The ‘nothing at all-ness’ of death is therefore best understood at an unconscious level.

And what has this all to do with Blackadder, Baldrick and boiled eggs?

Why absolutely nothing at all! .....Or has it?