Wednesday, October 19, 2011

Cant' Get This Analogy Out of My Head

Hey - bear with me.  This is a not-fully-processed thought.

In music, we either phrase notes TOWARD something or AWAY FROM something. 
Not all "towards" are the same, just like not all "aways" are the same. 

Think of this:

in Autumn, there is burnished richness, comfort, harvesting.  A time for gathering warmth to yourself, preparation, closeness.Then you are moving towards the winter solstice.  You are settling in, preparing for night.  There is anticipation, but it's more like regret, or dread.  Hunkering down. Then, there's the moment of being still -- the moment of the deepest part of winter.  There is no motion, only dark. 
Cadence.

Then, you are freed from the darkness, and are sliding away from all that tension.  Released.  The energy of the release allows you to coast towards light, towards growth, towards green.  It's all openness and relaxation.  Possibilities.  You arrive at the spring Equinox, and there you balance perfectly on the head of a pin.  No motion, just balance and stillness. 
Cadence

Following that, you move towards summer.  Anticipation, excitement, fertility, growth.  You are energized and focused on where you are going.  It's a powerful motion forward.  There is increasing depth and richness, luxury.  Complexity and tangles.  Heat.  It inevitably climaxes at Summer Solstice.  You stand still at last, baking, panting, jubilant.  Triumph.
Cadence.

Then relief.  Bathed in the satisfied glow of a job hard-won, basking in the triumph, you accept your congratulations, you sit down with a cool drink, you let the rush of giddy power ebb away.  You're not ready yet for a new adventure.  Time slows.  You start to get organized, knowing you will have a job to start soon.  There's the cool in the air, the smell of leaves and pencils.  It's time to put away the lawnchairs.  Autumn Equinox poises you -- holds you back for one moment, before the ice.  Neither here nor there.
Cadence.

1 comment:

Ashley said...

I like this a lot, maybe because I'm always comparing music to life, noting what music would fit a certain situation (if only we could have real soundtracks in life), imagining music expressed in different ways - dance, fine art, technology, faces.