Between two spaces

In art, it is all about the negative space. What you don't do is nearly important, and one of the hardest things I've had to train my eye to do is to look at what isn't there instead of what is.

It's like this book I picked up once, a couple years ago. I don't remember what it was; my sister was reading it and I was bored so I picked it up. It was about a young woman searching to find herself, and through her travels she would meet men, gurus of a sort, that taught her about the things between. One was a drummer that taught her to hear the silence between the beats; another was a Middle Eastern calligrapher who taught her to read the spaces between words. I never finished the book before my sister wanted it back, and I've always wondered about the importance of the spaces between. What was the final importance of these things she learned?