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Posts by Tony Collins

Tony Collins, EdD, MFA is a documentary filmmaker, teacher, musician, writer, and consultant with forty years of experience. His work explores creative expression, scholarly rigor, and nonfiction storytelling across the USA, Central America, Asia, and the UAE. In 2025, he is self-publishing Creative Scholarship: Rethinking Evaluation in Film and New Media on Amazon, challenging traditional academic assessment in film and new media. Website: anthonycollinsfilm.com

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The Power of Silence and How to Really Listen

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“The silence between the notes is as important as the notes themselves.”  ~Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart

When I was younger, I thought knowledge was something you could capture—something you could write down, measure, and prove. I believed that to understand something, I had to explain it. And for a long time, I tried.

But then, life—through film, through music, through long conversations with people whose wisdom couldn’t be found in books—taught me something else: the most powerful truths don’t always come in words. They exist in the space between them.

I learned this lesson in the mountains, where the sky stretches …