moon | composerinthegarden

“Autumn…the year’s last, loveliest smile.”
~WIlliam Cullen Bryant

Autumn is officially here in the Northern Hemisphere. I’ve been busy lately filming nature’s habitats for my A Year in Penn’s Woods project. On this past solstice weekend, I filmed scenes at a lake in the county park near our home. This lake was dredged and restored a year ago and is again filled with a rich diversity of plants and wildlife. Summertime was over, but the fish were still jumpin’ in the lake. Geese, ducks, and a beautiful blue heron graced the water. Yes, I lost a shoe to the mudflats that morning, having ventured too close to the water to find the right spot for filming. The water saturated mud sucked the tightly laced shoe right off of my foot and soaked through the other one; it seemed more important at the time to save the photography equipment rather than the hapless shoe. Undeterred, I continued filming in muddy socks on firmer ground. Lesson learned for future ventures.

The night of the solstice was magical; a moon slightly past full held court in the heavens wreathed by feathery garlands of clouds. The night was warm; the thrum and buzz of cicada and frog song created the illusion of a summer night instead of the advent of the autumn solstice. As the frog and insect chorus died away, the late evening concert was completed by the soft hoot of an owl in the woods. Although I am still editing the video footage I captured, I grabbed some still shots out of the video to share. Enjoy!

“At no other time (than autumn) does the earth let itself be inhaled in one smell, the ripe earth; in a smell that is in no way inferior to the smell of the sea, bitter where it borders on taste, and more honeysweet where you feel it touching the first sounds. Containing depth within itself, darkness, something of the grave almost.” ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The speed of light is the same for all observers, no matter what their relative speeds. Einstein

Tonight the air is crisp and cold and the sky is bright with winter stars and a growing half moon. Cassiopeia and the Big Dipper float over the roof of the house and Orion the Hunter is rising in the southern sky.

The “more than half” moon is bright enough to cast shadows across the dark tangle of the garden and thread between the almost leafless trees. The four seasons seem an inadequate description for the ongoing flow of changes that I notice in the garden; it morphs from moment to moment each time I step outside. As I set up my camera for a long exposure, I think of a card that a friend sent describing the thirteen moons of the native American tribes. What is this moon tonight? Harvest is over and winter will arrive soon; perhaps this is a liminal moon, a threshold between the season that has ended and the one yet to arrive.

The lyrics and melody to “Light” (See blog post Fire and Light) run through my head and keep me out in the cold night gazing up at the sky. “Gathered on the waters, reflected by the moon, even once removed, its power streams into the night. Light . . .” The piece is being premiered in ten days and I am preparing the visual media that is part of the performance. Solar flares, clouds across the moon and the water, light sifting through trees and clouds – the images and the music are inextricably intertwined and indeed, this piece was born from nights spent just like this, in the quiet of the garden filled with light.

Here is a sneak preview of part of the piece, with a MIDI soundtrack sans sung lyrics. The lyrics to the clip shown above:

Light, Light, Light. . .
Gathered on the waters,
reflected by the moon.
Even once removed, its power
streams into the night,
Light, Light, Light . . .

composerinthegarden

The intersection of music and the garden as intertwined creative art forms

Tag Archives: moon

The Year’s Last, Loveliest Smile

At the speed of light