This morning, heavy mist lay across the garden. Beautiful, mysterious, quiet . . .
All photos ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved
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Misty Mysterious Morning
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Tag Archives: nature
Fire and Light: when the idea is too big
Only light – not things – strikes the retina.
Derek Doeffinger, “The Art of Seeing”
Sometimes an idea is just too big to handle. I’ve been struggling for a few weeks with the last piece in “The Four Elements” – a musical exploration of earth, air, water, and fire. The first three pieces are written and came fairly easily, two have been performed, but I struggled with the final “element” – fire. Water, air and earth – these are the stuff of making gardens and seem like old friends. But fire? I felt stuck and overwhelmed until I realized that the pieces already written are about specific manifestations of the elements – earth as “Clay,” water as “Rain,” air as “Breath.” Eureka! Fire as “Light” – the essential element for growth and life. It made me reflect that I made the classic mistake of creative folk – I picked a subject too big, too broad. A point worth remembering for my self, for my students. Pick a particular manifestation of a concept that seems unapproachable and focus on your experience of it. Discover the power and meaning it holds for you personally – there is less chance of being trapped by pre-conceived notions and more chance of translating your particular experience into something universal that resonates with others.
When I made the connection between the big idea and the microcosm of my own life, I had something to explore and everything changed. Fire – too big for me to handle, even after exploring videos of of everything from molten lava flows to forest fires. The sudden realization of “fire equals light” gave me the personal, the particular. As a photographer and a gardener, light is everything, defines everything. While it may still seem a big idea, it is very specific for me: the light sifting between trees, light breaking through clouds, that peculiar moment of diffused light at the end of the day when the garden takes on an otherworldly glow. The light I try to capture with my camera, the reflected light of the moon that keeps me awake at night, the odd non-directional light in my dreams when I do fall asleep.
Now, ironically, I am “on fire” with the idea of light. Lyrics and sound flood my imagination, photos and video present themselves for the performance media. The gate is open; I can’t wait to begin.
All photos and text of “Fire and Light: When the Idea is Too BIg” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved
Anatomy of a thunderstorm
I hear the thunder, long rumbles moving through the hills but no rain – perfect for recording. I dash inside to grab my Zoom recorder, ask my husband to turn down the guitar parts he is practicing in the basement, and put the dog in her “safe” space in the house.
For the first few minutes, I record the thunder – deep booms rather than sharp cracks – but the echoes roll on and on. It is quickly approaching, each boom louder than the last and I’m getting a great signal on the recorder. Suddenly I realize that sound in nature is complex with nothing isolated; although my goal is to record some great thunder sounds without the added sound of rain, I cannot capture it as I had planned – a murmur of cicadas fills the aural space, punctuated by bird song and a hum of distant traffic. I’ve been in the recording studio too long, where every instrument and sound source is isolated and remixed, each thread separated and reassembled. This is a different space altogether, with layers of sound rising and falling underneath the drama of a weather event, a gestalt of sound.
It’s not long before the rain comes – I grab the Zoom and head for the protection of the covered deck but decide to leave the record button on and capture the entire event. At first, the rain is a gentle swishing curtain of sound but it soon builds to a pounding roar slicing through the trees, hammering the roof. A hummingbird still trying to feed gives up and flits into the woods for cover. There is a complex rhythm to it all, an aural story of sounds intertwined in a bigger than life tableau. I wonder how long it has been since I’ve sat outside and really listened to an entire thunderstorm from beginning to end, resisting the urge to refill my coffee cup or check my e-mail. Years, probably. Yet, because I wanted to capture the entire event, I relax and listen and surrender to the moment. I become aware of the progression of the storm as if I were in a concert hall, the quiet passages, the crescendos, the bold dramatic punctuations, and the unexpected layers of birds and insects that remained a part of the aural tapestry.
Finally the rain trickles to a few drops, the cicada buzz rises to the fore again, a car passes by splashing through the puddles, and a crow caws in the distance. Cardinals and woodpeckers chime in and the hummingbird reappears. Water quietly drips from the trees, the woods around me take on a golden glow as the clouds drift away. A soft murmur of thunder leaves a trail of sound in the distance.
Here is an abbreviated version of the thunderstorm that I recorded (reduced from 20 minutes to less than 2 – kudos to Bill Purse, audio editor.)
To see what others are doing with environmental sound as art, visit Ear to the Earth.
All text, photos, and audio ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved
Autumn Minimalism: the Constancy of Change
The garden now reminds me of a symphony orchestra tuning for a concert. Fall has not quite arrived in its full power and majesty, but the time will soon arrive for its long unfolding. Allen Lacy, “The Garden in Autumn”
Minimalism has been on my mind all week. My student ensemble tackled Terry Riley‘s “In C” on Wednesday, the next day a composition student declared his intention to write a piece in the “minimalist style” and I found myself explaining the intersection of multiple rhythmic patterns and the sense of constant motion that emerges in this approach. Meanwhile, I’m preparing for a visit from friend and minimalist composer David Borden as well as another performance of my orchestral piece, Sketches of America, which includes minimalist elements. So, perhaps it is not surprising that walking through the garden this morning, coffee firmly in hand, I noticed the constant motion of the garden as well.
The floral fireworks of July are a distant memory; September is all about motion. Tall slender stems of late blooming annuals and ornamental grasses lend the look of a meadow in the garden beds, moving in the lightest breeze and shimmering in the sunlight. Bees and butterflies, hungry for a late season feast before winter, bow and bob from flower to flower, layering the garden with another repetition of rhythm. Cicadas haven’t ceased their buzzing ostinato from the night before; the drone is punctuated by a pair of cardinals warning of a wandering cat; once danger is past, melodious bird song resumes. A hummingbird swoops by me, its wings sounding like the roll of a snare drum; we’re both surprised by the encounter, and he cheeps and flies away in search of a more private feeding ground.
I meander to the upper deck, where I can see the garden in its entirety while gently rocking in a chair, my own contribution to the motion of the garden. Even twenty feet above ground, bees and wasps find the plumes of Agastache ‘Apricot Sprite’ that I planted in pots on the deck; they hustle in and out of the long wands of flowers, triggering a pungent scent of licorice in the warm humid air. I’m amused by my feelings of peace and stillness in the garden, when in actuality it is a place constantly in flux, moving and changing in both sight and sound. Minimalistic music, with its floating patterns hiding surprise within repetition, has always seemed to me to be both constantly moving and yet utterly still at the same time. This morning,the garden seems to embody that same quality, a constancy of change.
All text and video in “Autumn MInimalism: the Constancy of Change” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved
The Sound of the August Garden
It is early evening, and there is just enough light to see as I meander through the garden, a last visit before dark. Angel Eyes and I wander about, pausing to listen to the insect orchestra from various vantage points. A steady two note drone provides the underlying ostinato, while pointillistic voices of cicadas and crickets spring from every direction in polite succession. It may be too cool this evening for the tree frog chorus – on a warm night, they are the antiphonal brass and rat-a-tat percussion of this natural orchestra, but tonight it seems to be strings and woodwinds.
I love living surrounded by trees – my attempts to compose surround sound pieces seem feeble when compared to the robust chorus of our woodlands in August. I really should be in my studio tonight, working on the fourth movement of a large work called “The Four Elements” – fire, or perhaps Lux Aeterna. But it is difficult to tear myself away from the amazing concert in the garden. So . . . I pour myself a modest glass of wine and surrender to nature’s concert once again – Angel and I go out onto the deck for a final listening session.
The late August garden is a tall and blowsy affair. The plants that survived July’s burning sun and dry soil have caught their second wind and are encouraged into fresh growth by the cooler nights and the rainy remnants of the hurricane season. Hummingbirds and butterflies flock to their favorite flowers, building up energy for their imminent migrations. Everything is tall – the shrubs have grown extra arms that reach everywhere, the grasses have sprouted tall wands that catch the wind, and everything seems to flow and spill and tumble in a rush to be seen and tasted before summer ends.
Now it is almost dark – the brash golds and burgundies of Rudbeckia and Zinnia are now only rendered as silhouettes in the fading light. It is chilly enough to want a sweater and a cup of tea – but it is hard to go inside when the fading light still reveals layer upon layer of texture, shape, movement . . . it is difficult to leave, to walk away from the enchantment of Mother Earth’s humble orchestra. Tonight, the windows will remain open to the sound of the August garden.
Listen to the sounds of the cicadas and tree frogs.
Text and audio of “The Sound of the August Garden” ©2011 Lynn Emberg Purse, All Rights Reserved
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