Nocturne
Moonlit photographs in Homage to Fryderyk Chopin, his
21 Nocturnes for solo piano, and Andrzej Wasowski's
Heartfelt 1989 recorded performance of the music
At midnight
my thoughts went out
to the bounds of darkness.
Fredrick Ruckert, Um Mitternacht
Introduction
This project came unexpectedly, out of the blue. I was about to publish my last blog project Growing Light, which pays homage to the great Ukrainian composer Valentin Silvestrov and his miniature piano compositions, and was wondering what my next project would be about, when a good friend with whom I have shared a love of music for many years, sent me an email with raving reviews about a new album of Chopin's Nocturnes performed by Stephen Hough. a great pianist we both have been following closely. I immediately ordered the 2CD set and as soon as possible began listening to the new recordings. I was amazed and even thrilled at how fast Hough played all of the Nocturnes! I imagined this was the way Chopin would have played them when he was presenting his public audiences with the "virtuoso" side of his personality. Hough's improvisational-like performances caused sparks of revelatory light to fly out in all directions from the littlest musical details in each of the Nocturnes, details which in other interpretations I had heard, remained hidden behind the more obvious dramatic and melodic features.
However, I do not feel an affinity for Hough's new album though I very much appreciate his courageous, virtuosic interpretive approach to these popular masterpieces. According to what I read in Alan Walker's remarkable biography Fryderyk Chopin : A Life and Times, Hough's performances are probably very similar to the way Chopin performed them in order to woo those who attended his public concerts, which (truth be told) Chopin would have preferred to avoid if he hadn't needed the money. What Chopin loved most was performing to a few of his closest friends in an intimate setting.
Hough's new album inspired me to listen once again to a 1989 recording, Chopin 21 Nocturnes by pianist Andrzej Wasowski, a recording which I have always loved for his slower, more contemplative, deeply felt interpretations. Thanks to Hough's new recording, I have come to realize--with an even more conscious awareness--how important Wasowski's recording is to me. It glows with an interior radiance that clearly is based in a shared empathy for Chopin's Polish background as well as an understanding of Chopin's grace-filled technical genius and improvisational instincts.
Wasowski's recorded 1989 performance is how I prefer to imagine Chopin performing his Nocturnes, to his beloved friends, perhaps in a candle-lit room in which the darkness embraced the pianist, his listeners, and the music, together, as if all had become united in the darkness of night and the grace of his performance:
[Chopin's] apartment . . . was only lighted by some
wax candles, grouped around one of Pleyel's pianos which
he particularly liked for their silvery sonorousness. . . As the
corners of the room were left in obscurity, all idea of limit was lost,
so that there seemed no boundary save the darkness of space . . . . . . . .
Franz Liszt, F. Chopin
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As he improvises, Chopin seems unaware that we are listening to him [then suddenly]
he falters and stops. "Its not finished!" says Delacroix. "Nothing comes to me,"
Chopin responds, "only reflections and shadows . . . I look for a color, but
can't even find an outline." "You will find them both," says Delacroix.
"But if I find only moonlight?" ~ "Then you you will have found
[responds Delacroix] a reflection of a reflection."
George Sand, Impressions et Souvenirs
(Note: the Ruckert, Liszt and Sand quotes above were taken from the CD booklet for Chopin 21 Nocturnes, Wasowski, pianist.)
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Chopin was born in 1810 in Poland, which was under Russian Rule. He was a child prodigy and grew up playing the piano and studying with the best teachers available to him, who claimed they had little to teach him. He died in Paris, internationally celebrated and loved, at the age of 39 from tuberculosis. He had always been, from the time of his birth, the victim of a very delicate physical constitution. He left Poland, at the age of twenty, just weeks before the onset of the Polish-Russian War of 1930-31. He felt sad and guilty leaving Poland and his beloved family, friends and teachers, but it was time for him to embark upon a professional career in music. He had already gained a reputation in Europe as a musical genius and decided to start his career in Italy, the home of the operas he loved so much and which would later inspire his Nocturnes. However as fate would have it, the War made it impossible for him to enter Italy. He ended up in Paris instead where he lived most of the rest of his remaining 19 years as a successful virtuoso pianist, composer, and a private piano teacher to children of wealthy Parisian families who would boast to others that their children were studying with "the Master." Teaching helped Chopin pay the bills which made it possible for him to avoid traveling so frequently to other big cities where crowds of music lovers always waited anxiously to hear the "ineffable artist" perform.
Travel was difficult for anyone in the 1830's, but especially so for Chopin because of his fragile health. He would often have to spend several days in a coach drawn by horses over horribly uncomfortable roads in freezing temperatures or miserable heat; and sometimes he would even have to travel with goats or fowl in the seats next to him when there were not enough other human passengers to sufficiently fill the coach. He usually became quite ill when he traveled longer distances. It could take several days for him to recover from the trip and regain enough strength to perform.
Walker's biography is a fascinating portrait not only of Chopin as a person and as an extraordinary talent, but it paints a portrait of the Times in which he lived, and the very privileged cultural worlds he needed to interface with in order to make a living and pay off his ever-escalating debts. Between 1830 and 1849, the demands to hear him perform required that he travel from Paris to Berlin and Vienna, London, throughout Italy and Scotland, etc. . . . always feeling anxious to get back to Paris where he could rest in peace, compose in quiet, and spend enjoyable evenings late into the night performing for his friends who really understood and appreciated not only Chopin's genius but his sensitive nature and clever sense of humor.
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When Walker wrote about Chopin's death, he referred to Chopin's life as a "vale of tears." Indeed, as I read the biography I was struck by the similarities of events Chopin had to contend in his time in relation to our own. Here are a few examples of what I have been greatly concerned with and which in various ways have influenced my life and impacted my creative process:
~ The United States has now passed the mark of One Million Deaths due to Covid and its variants since May, 2020. Hospitalizations have been ramping up again, especially in the western states due to the emerging new variants. It looks like new revised vaccines will be forthcoming in the fall.
~ Putin's Invasion of Ukraine is continuing in brutal, merciless ways. The suffering of the Ukrainian People, innocent civilians, women and children, is so very painful to witness. And the War is impacting the global economy: inflation has become a big problem for many working families; fuel prices are going off the charts and hampering the war on climate change in many ways; and global food shortages have become a serious issue because of Putin's War.
~ Climate Change continues to be nearly ignored by politicians, even as extraordinary, record setting high temperatures, wildfires and various other kinds of destructive weather events are continuing to further degrade the natural world, threaten major cities with flooding, and put the planet Earth as a whole at risk to a frightfully dangerous degree . . .
~ Women's rights to control their own bodies has been taken away from them. On June 24, 2022 the very conservative Supreme Court voted 6-3 to overturn Roe vs Wade, making Abortions no longer protected by Federal Law. Half the states have banned abortions since the ruling.
~ The House January 6 Congressional Committee Hearings began the evening of June 9. Every major TV company covered the first in a series of very important, revealing public media events . . . except Fox News. The truth of Trump's involvement in the dangerous, destructive January 6 fiasco is gradually, carefully coming to light with clear, truthful testimonies.
~ Gun Violence here in the US has manifested in multiple recent tragic Mass Shootings. Politicians have for the past three decades been arguing with each other about gun laws; in late June a new gun bill has been passed which, though inadequate, is at least a beginning to face the truth of this escalating phenomenon.
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There is an all pervasive feeling of sorrow in Chopin's Nocturnes, and even brief expressions of anger or frustration, and yet a beautiful radiance always emerges from deep within their darkness that gives the Nocturnes, as performed by Wasowski, a sense of timelessness, music which is ultimately about love and longing. My unexpected renewed interest in the Nocturnes has inspired me to continue the kind of photography I have been pursuing for the past two years and more, beginning with my initial responses to the Covid Pandemic and the many disturbing events that occurred in the closing weeks and days of Trump's corrupted, destructive presidency.
Thanks to the tremendous grace that flows in the yoga I practice, the grace of my creative process in photography, and the grace I experience in the music I listen to almost nearly constantly, I have been able to live with a certain degree of contentment and understanding despite all the social injustices, power trips, lies, corruption and man-made environmental disasters that pervades our part of the world and the planet as a whole. The over-riding theme for my photography projects since the beginning of the Pandemic has been "Finding Light In the Darkness." This unexpected project in homage to Chopin and his Nocturnes seems the perfect next project in the series. The "moonlit" photographs that have emerged for this project are important for their "interior light" and I will be writing more about this as the project's Introduction continues to unfold, below. After the presentation of the photographs I will continue my Introduction and then offering some Commentary on a few selected photographs from the project.
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But I must pause, here, to emphasize a very important point when it comes to Chopin's Nocturnes. It is not only the compositions which have provided me with the inspiration and refuge I find meaningful and fulfilling; after having listened to many recordings of the complete collection of Nocturnes, it has become quite obvious to me that when the performances of this great music are not performed with Heart and understanding, the music holds very little attraction for me. I have insisted on performances that are not only superbly, intimately recorded; I must also feel the performer's engagement with the music at a very deep heartfelt level, and with a compassionate understanding of the music, the composer's life, his person, and most importantly his inner-most being.
In this regard, the great, if little known, Polish pianist, Andrzej Wasowski was the perfect kindred-in-spirit performer for Chopin's music. His 1989 recorded performance of the 21 Nocturnes is overflowing with the kind of interior radiance that illuminates the ineffable vastness of this beautiful, dark-night music, music that is about--I would argue--the longing of the soul. Wasowski's interpretations have a singing quality and a sustained palpable feeling of longing that is so real, so intimate that they transcend the conventions of Romanticism. The album is of a such a high degree of excellence that only tears can express the depth of what it offers.
The brief review, below, of Wasowsk's 2CD album, Chopin 21 Nocturnes reflects my own experience and appreciation of Wasowski's performances. Though recorded in 1989, this extraordinary music, which was beautifully recorded, did not become available in the US until 1996 thanks to a small independent label named Concord records.
Andrzej Wasowski is not exactly a household name these days. However, it is time that situation altered, and it’s too bad that the Polish pianist, born in 1919, is no longer alive to effect such a change. After surviving a turbulent youth in wartime Europe, winning prizes in the early Fifties and giving many concert tours, in the mid-Sixties Wasowski made his way to America, where he lived and taught until his death in 1993.
These performances of Chopin Nocturnes, recorded in 1989, are really rather extraordinary. Two features leap out. First, a glorious singing tone [bel canto] of great clarity, eloquence and purity, with beautifully balanced accompaniment and inner voices. Secondly, there’s a concentration on the darker, tragic and redemptive elements of the Nocturnes which makes these interpretations very personal and moving – some listeners might think them too emotionally overladen, but they moved me to tears.
Each piece feels complete not only musically but also philosophically. Wasowski’s use of tempo rubato is also very striking, probably a little more extreme than current thinking on Chopin would permit, but always applying the true meaning of the term, even within his generally slow tempi. I found these discs deeply stirring. Jessica Duchen
(Note: Wasowski's earlier 1980 recorded performances of Chopin's Mazurkas, first issued on the Finnadar label in 1988 and later made available by the Concord label, in 2007, has received extraordinary critical reviews as well. For example his performances were praised for their "full blooded and intoxicating, almost shocking use of rubato, the freedom with which they shake the pieces' rhythmic structures.")
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Though Chopin struggled for breath his entire life, but he was blessed with the ability to improvise freely at the piano, and this provided him, his closest friends and his public audiences with great delight. Walker provides us with many wonderful insights, and reports from published articles regarding Chopin's innate ability to improvise. And, importantly, Chopin's spontaneous improvisations provided him with the foundations of practically all his written compositions. In a long quotation Walker provides us from the writings of George Sand, with whom Chopin lived for several years, she explains how Chopin would hear something in his improvisations at the keyboards and then would rush to write down on paper what he had heard for later compositional development into larger finished works. He often became exasperated with his inability to get down accurately on paper what had heard, what had inspired him to stop his improvising and try to write it down. According to Sand, Chopin could not compose without the piano immediately available to him, thus whenever and wherever he traveled, arrangements had to be made in advance to insure that a piano would be waiting for him in his living quarters when he arrived at his destination.
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The reviews published regarding Chopin's public performances make fascinating reading. They tell us that he often performed his own and others' composed music as if he were spontaneously improvising. In this regard it seems to me Wasowski's recorded performances of the Nocturnes have that same vital, essential living quality of spontaneous improvisation, even in the quieter, moodier passages. Wasowski's performances of my most favorite Nocturnes create the feeling of a deep breath taken in, and a longing for something not sayable in words. There are very moving passages which seem as if a human voice is singing deep inside the vibrations of a solitary piano string . . . as if a flower is opening to a clear night illuminated by a full moon which unveils the vast mystery hidden within every created thing in the universe including the Hearts of every human being:
Flowers open every night across the sky,
a breathing space, and sudden
flame catching.
*
What a wonderful lotus it is that blooms
at the heart of the spinning wheel
of the universe!
Only a few pure souls know
of its delight.
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In the late 1960's, after studying photography at RIT three years and taking Nathan Lyon's home workshop for two years, I decided to finish my last year of undergraduate study (1968) at the Institute of Design-Chicago. It was in Chicago that music first became a constant
source of inspiration for my photography.
In fulfillment of my required senior year photography project at ID, I created a book of photographs entitle Kraus (1967-68) that was inspired by my blossoming relationship to Gloria (who would become my wife in 1969) and Richard Wagner's four part opera known as the Ring Cycle. I had learned about the Ring Cycle in a European Literature course at ID. The teacher, who had actually experienced the Ring Cycle many times at the Bayreuth Festival, had a piano brought into his classroom upon which and played for us excerpts from the Ring to illustrate Wagner's use of leitmotif and how that technique was applied to creative writing in European literature!
Those classes blew my mind. I bought the Solti LP recording of the Ring Cycle and studied the operas as if my life depended on it. Those ideas I had learned about leitmotif in my literature course, and all that I had absorbed from my personal studies and repeated listenings to Wagners four Ring operas, became integrated into my senior book project in a very intuitive but articulate way.
Opera was a major influence on Chopin's Nocturnes, especially the operas of Bellini and Mozart. Chopin loved the singing human voice and there are many passages in the Nocturnes where that operatic singing quality is startlingly clear and deeply moving.
Between 1994-20000 I worked on a seven year photography project entitled Studies which was inspired by brief piano pieces created by composers from all musical periods, with an emphasis on modern and contemporary composers. Chopin's groundbreaking Etudes and Preludes were an important influence on that Studies project. (Please visit this link which contains a listing of all my Music Inspired Photography Projects.)
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When I'm working on a project inspired by music, I listen to that music constantly. I know that qualities inherent within the music--its moods, tonalities, rhythms, structures, etc.--somehow become part of the visual character of the photographs I am making for that project. The music also influences how I fine-tune the images when preparing them for blog publication or public exhibition, and how I present the images sequentially. Even as I'm writing the texts for a project (which is the most tortuous part of the process of creating blog projects) hearing the music in the background seems to relieve the stress and pain of writing for me, and in subtle ways inspire and direct what I'm trying to articulate in words.
The Bird & the Super Flower Blood Moon
The following story, about a mysterious incident that occurred on a very auspicious day and ended up influencing this project needed to be shared here, I felt. So here we go:
I had decided to date and announce my Growing Light project on my blog's Welcome Page on Sunday, May 15, 2022 in honor of the Lunar Birthday of the great modern day yogic saint, Swami Muktananda who founded the Siddha Yoga Path. (Gloria and I have been practicing Siddha Yoga since 1987.*) Coincidentally, on that same evening (May 15, 2022) a Total Eclipse of the Moon began occurring at about 10:30 pm. I learned of the eclipse some time after I had already committed myself to creating this project about Chopin's Nocturnes.
(*Note: Gloria and I began practicing Siddha Yoga in August, 1987, after spending two days with Gurumayi Chidvilsananda in a two day meditation program known as an Intensive, a program which her teacher, Swami Muktananda had used as a way of initiating students of all ages, cultures and religions into the practice of Siddha Yoga meditation. [See my project Photography and Yoga.] Both Gloria and I were deeply touched by the grace, the shakti, the divine power of the Siddha Lineage which flowed through Gurumayi and her tw0-day meditation program, and we have been practicing Siddha Yoga with Gurumayi ever since that first auspicious meeting with her.)
The first thing I did Sunday morning, May, 15, 2022, was publish the Growing Light project and announce the new project on my blog's Welcome Page. Then later that morning Gloria and I joined other Siddha Yoga students in the Rochester, NY area via a zoom program to chant Muktananda's sacred name together in celebration of his Lunar Birthday. (Later that same night Gloria and I would also participate in a live stream video meditation program that had been prepared by the SYDA foundation in honor of Muktananda's birthday.)
During that same afternoon, Gloria and I met with our son Shaun, his wife Hao and our grandchild Claire to celebrate Mother's Day.
(We had to extend our Mother's Day celebration from May 8 to May 15 because Hao had gotten sick with Covid just days before Mother's Day, May 8. We agreed to delay our celebrations until after she Hao completed her quarantine period and tested negative once again.)
After spending a wonderful afternoon together with Shaun, Hao and Claire, we headed back home so we could prepare for the livestream video program in honor of Muktananda's birthday. As we were driving along a hilly back road surrounded by green fields, ponds and trees in the early evening light . . . all of a sudden a large black bird rose up from the tall grasses on the left side of the road, flew over the road toward us, and then suddenly appeared near the car's front windshield!
Gloria had screamed "Stop!" and I had slammed on the breaks, hoping to avoid hitting the bird. It did seem that we were successful in not making contact with the bird, for neither Gloria nor I heard or felt any signs of impact. I did see some loose feathers circulating just above the upper right corner of the windshield, so there may have been a slight brushing of the bird's wings as it flew over and past our car.
(Later, after we got home, I checked the car for any signs of having hit the bird. I could not see any indication that the bird and the car had made contact. )
Gloria was worried that we may have unknowingly injured the bird and wanted to go back and check the area we had just driven through to see if we could find any sign of the possibly wounded bird.
I wanted to drive on. I felt certain that we did not hit the bird, at least in a way that would have hurt it and endangered it enough that it would have been visible anywhere near the road. Also, it was getting late and we had planned to participate in the meditation program in honor of Muktananda's Lunar Birthday. So I presented my case for going home rather than turning back, and Gloria, reluctantly, agreed to drive on home.
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After Gloria and I participated in the livestream Siddha Yoga meditation program, I stayed up to see the beginning of the Total Lunar Eclipse which began a little after 10:30 pm New York time. It was a clear night, and I had a perfect view of the full moon from our front porch. The intensity and silvery coolness of the light was mesmerizingly magical to behold that night! (Perhaps the meditation program honoring Muktananda's Lunar Birthday just minutes before I looked at the moon had influenced by vision.) However, I was so tired from the long, busy day, that after watching the first shadowy signs of the moon's forthcoming transformation, I went to bed.
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The eclipse was named the Super Flower Blood Moon because during the eclipse the moon turned a hauntingly mysterious red color, as you can see below in the photograph which I found the next morning on the internet.
The May 15, 2022 Super Flower Blood Moon
A full lunar eclipse occurs when the Moon moves into
the Earth's shadow.[1] This can occur only when
the Sun, Earth, and Moon are exactly or very
closely aligned (in syzygy), with Earth
between the other two, which can
happen only on the night of
a full moon.
Wikipedia
When Gloria awoke that next morning she still felt worried about the bird we had nearly hit. After talking about it more, we decided to drive back together to the site of the encounter and look for the possibly injured bird.
We found nothing. But we have experienced--all too frequently as a matter of fact--birds accidentally flying into our large picture window which looks out over the meadow behind our house. The birds, seeing the reflections of the meadow and the sky in the window, when they try to fly into that vast illusionary space, of course they smack into the invisible glass. Depending on the angle of their flight, their speed, their size, etc. most of the birds bounce off the glass and fly on, unharmed. However there have been several cases in which an unsuspecting bird has hit the window with such a direct and strong force that an image of its impact was imprinted upon the surface of the glass, as in the picture below, which I had included in an earlier blog project entitled Window Pictures.
(Note: the image, below, from my project Window Pictures, has been revised in several ways to cohere visually with the other images in this project. If you want to compare the two different versions of the same one image, visit this link to the Window Pictures project.)
Impression of a bird in flight left on our Picture Window.
(Note: Often, after a bird hits the picture window, if we can locate it, it will be in a state of shock, it may even be unconscious, or dead. If it is alive but too stunned to fly on, often it will lay or sit still for some time until it regains consciousness and then it will fly on.) After Gloria and I looked for the bird by the side of the road for a while and found nothing, Gloria felt relieved and grateful that we had at least gone back to check and we started driving back home.
However, there is more to this story. On our way home, Gloria and I began talking in more detail about what we actually perceived during the rather mysterious bird occurrence. I had assumed she saw what I saw . . . but then I was very surprised to learn that she had seen something very different.
Gloria, sitting in the front right passenger seat, saw the bird running across the road toward the car. How then, I wondered, had it gotten up near the upper right corner of the windshield? When Gloria started screaming to stop the car, she believes when I slammed on the brakes the bird rose up just in time to avoid a head on collision with the car.
Then Gloria added another surprising detail: she said she saw the bird brush up against the side of the right-front door window next to where she was sitting! (not the upper right corner of the car's front windshield).
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OK. It's not so unusual that two or more people who have been traumatized by the same event will have perceived the event in different ways . . . So, the mystery of the bird encounter remains. (Maybe in never really happened!) The fact that this experience occurred on Swami Muktananda's Lunar Birthday and just a few hours before the beginning of the Total Lunar Eclipse . . . an eclipse that had been given the weird name "Super Flower Blood Moon" . . . all this made the bird encounter seem all the more mysterious, and more auspicious, at least to me.
(Note: Many people believe that potent energies are released by an eclipse that can impact both one's physical environment and one's own psychological-emotional-spiritual mode of being. And because of those energies, emotions can be heightened and mishaps can happen more easily. ~ Teachers of Siddha Yoga consider that both lunar and solar eclipses are events of great significance, and are especially beneficial times for performing spiritual practices such as chanting and meditating.)
The Inversions
As I was writing the "The Bird & the Super Flower Blood Moon" story, above, and listening to Wasowski's performances of Chopin's Nocturnes playing over and over again, I began remembering the images of the bird flying over the car, the loose feathers circling in the air above the corner of the windshield; the silvery bright images of the full moon I had seen from my front porch; and the red Super Flower Blood Moon images I had seen on the internet. And those images reminded me of photographs I had made earlier for my Window Pictures project, plus a "bird" image from an earlier project entitled "The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . "
"The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . "
As I kept playing those images over and over again in my mind . . . spontaneously, imaginatively I transformed those dark images into light by inversing their tonalities! The inversed images became magical "illuminations" in my mind similar to what I had seen and felt as I gazed up in wonder at the silvery-brilliant light of the full moon in the dark sky just before the beginning of the Lunar Eclipse . . . and just moments after having participated in a meditation program in honor of Swami Muktananda's Lunar Birthday.
The moon is the mystic vessel containing the milky soma of immortality;
the ship of souls that transports the dead to heaven . . . . . . "
Everyone is a moon" wrote Mark Twain,
"and has a dark side which he
never shows to anybody."
from "The Book of Symbols: Reflections on Archetypal Images"
After that Imaginal experience I felt compelled to try actually inversing the red Super Flower Blood Moon image I had taken off the internet. (see above). When I saw the "blue moon" image I decided to find the digital files of the bird image imprinted on the picture window, and the image from the Bird, The Angel of Tears project and try inversing those images.
This unexpected, spontaneous Imaginal play of inversing those dark images, turning them into light, and the red images, turning them into blue, helped to bring a satisfying--if mysterious--pictorial closure to my "Bird & Super Flower Blood Moon" story. Later, I decided to add a few other inversed images to this project.
(Note: All this might have sounded like an odd thing for me to do, but in fact I have made inversions of many of my photographs and published them in several of my blog projects. It is a transformative technique which I enjoy using when the situation presents itself, and the Photoshop editing software I use makes inversing an image a rather simple thing to do . . . though usually, after the image is inversed, it requires other kinds of editing adjustments to the get the image to look right, to look visually articulate for my aesthetic purposes.)
The Mystery of the Nocturnes, the "Inner Moon" & the Symbolic Photograph
In Chopin's Nocturnes there are moments when single, solitary struck notes on the piano string become as if an otherworldly sound of the human voice singing, expressing the heartfelt longing for Something unknown, something unsayable. It is music of a nearly unbearable feeling of melancholy conjoined with mystery and love.
According to Alan Walker's biography, Chopin had plenty of reasons to feel sad and lonely, to feel a deep desire for a love that may have been impossible for him because of the nature of his physical and emotional-psychological constitution. Chopin claimed that his music was never programatic, however one cannot help but suspect that he may have transformed aspects of his deeply personal experiences into his music--unconsciously if not intentionally--and especially in the Nocturnes which have a depth of feeling that transcends melancholy--feelings I would identify as longing.
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I am especially drawn to the three posthumous Nocturnes and the first of the three Opus #9 Nocturnes; the two haunting, singing Nocturnes of Opus 27; and the last three pairs of Nocturnes, Opus #48, 55 & 62.
These choices, I must underscore once again, are based on the performances I have heard by pianist Andrzej Wasowski. His 1989 recorded performances make all of the difference to me. They are profoundly articulate, intimate, deeply personal musical statements. Just as an eclipse of the moon can occur only when the Sun, Earth and Moon are in perfect alignment (with the Earth between the Sun and the Moon, and only when the moon is Full) so there must be a perfect alignment and perhaps a merging or conjoining of the spirits of the performer, the composer's written music, and the listener for such a magical experience to have occurred. I also believe that this kind of alignment can only occur in that timeless, most sacred grace-filled space known as the Heart, or the Oneness of Being.
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This idea of alignment and conjunction of performer, listener and composed music can be considered in the context of Carl Jung's theory of synchronicity in which there is an inexplicable acausal "falling together" -- or conjunction in time and space -- of an inner-world image and its corresponding outer-world counterpart. One who perceives this extraordinary conjunction of inner and outer images usually experiences the perception as being profoundly, personally meaningful, overflowing with deeply felt emotions including a sense of the mysterious, the inexplicable. Jung spoke of synchronicity as a revelatory experience of the Self, a concept similar to the way yogi's speak of the divine inner Self, an interior reality that could best be described as the Oneness of Being. In the yoga I practice the teachings say over and over again that God, Guru, the Absolute and the inner divine Self are one and the same.
(Note: Jung's writings about the unconscious, alchemy, and synchronicity were the basis for my theory of the Symbolic Photograph which was the theme of my MFA written thesis requirement at the University of New Mexico, Albuquerque, 1972.)
I can give as an example of synchronicity the following personal experiences which I have already shared with you in this project: the "falling together" of 1) an email I received from a friend encouraging me to hear a new recording of the Nocturnes just as I was completing my last project, Growing Light, and 2) giving as the publication date for that completed project the same date as Swami Muktananda's Lunar Birthday, which 3) "fell" on the same day that 4) a Full Lunar Eclipse occurred; and 5) on that same day of the eclipse I nearly hit a bird that had unexpectedly appeared in front of our car! The dramatic name of the full moon eclipse, Super Flower Blood Moon added to the strangeness, mystery and inexplicable meaning of it all.
It seems to me the universe pulled all these events together so that I would become conscious of something that could not be known in any other way, a knowing beyond the limits of my intellect, beyond my ability to explain with words. Synchronistic experiences, which include the making of photographs that functioning as True, living symbols, need and deserve to be carefully, deeply contemplated.
Synchronicity and Symbolic photographs are manifestations of the creative power of the universe--shakti, or grace--gifts intended to help me become more aware of the Oneness of Being, which is very difficult for the mind, the intellect. the ego to comprehend because it is a matter of the Heart. In this regard I wanted to share a rather odd epiphany I had while working on this project: It occurred to me that the Nocturnes all sound very much alike to me, as if each is a variation on--or a reflection of--all the others. In other words, each Nocturne is a part of a greater whole, the Oneness of Being.
Similarly, my photographs of the past two years and more, which have been a visual contemplation on the theme Finding Light In the Darkness, look and feel very much alike and (to me) and very much like how I experience Chopin's Nocturnes: both--the images and the music--have a certain dark feeling tone and at the same time an inner radiance, an interior presence that has to do with longing.
*
The word Nocturne invokes in me the magic and mystery of the night, the self-luminous stars and most especially the silvery blue light of a full moon on a clear night. It has been said, very often, that a full moon does have a peculiar affect (not unlike that of an eclipse) upon the human psyche. It seems obvious to me that Chopin's Nocturnes are aligned with a particular mode of consciousness that has to do especially with interiority, and in particular a deep feeling of longing. How could a heart filled with longing not be touched by Chopin's Nocturnes? I only wish everyone could hear Wasowski's performances of them, for they reveal, indeed they manifest musically, in sound, an interior light that words cannot describe, a sound that the yogis refer to as the Unstruck sound, a light that the yogis have referred to as the "inner moon." Wasowski clearly understands Chopin's music, its mystery, its secret, its longing.
The greatest mystery of all is grace. The yogic saints say that grace, the divine Presence, pervades everything. As it pertains to the creative process, it manifests only when one asserts great self-effort, motivated by a deep sense of devotion or longing, and a willingness to surrender one's will so that grace can do what must, what needs be done. Wasowski's 1989 recorded performances of Chopin's Nocturnes is above all else grace-filled. They reflect his profound effort to interiorize the essence of Chopin's compositions, and thus to loose himself in the music . . . to allow the music to play him. How else could his performance feel so "otherworldly," complete, illuminated by an inner radiance that the yogic sages refer to as the "eternal light"?
Just as there is unimaginable darkness surrounding the light of a full moon, so the musical space of a Chopin Nocturne can be unfathomably vast and yet luminous when I become absorbed in the music and interiorize it by listening with my Heart. What could be more vast, more luminous, more mysterious than the space of the Heart? Swami Muktananda taught that everything in the universe exists within us, in the unimaginable vastness of the Heart, of the inner Self, a space that knows no boundaries . . . and from which everything emerges into the outer world. He says the space of the Heart is far greater than the universe itself; it is a vastness that is nothing less than God, the Absolute, the Oneness of Being.
*
Below is an excerpt from a 1994 SYDA publication entitled The Light of the Guru. (In this context the word Guru in the title must be understood to mean God, the inner Self, the Absolute.) The text speaks of an "inner effulgence" that is "the moon of consciousness," "the moon of mystery," the light of one's ". . . own inner Self" which is "ever serene," "silvery white," and of "eternal purity."
Such poetic metaphors could serve as well the astounding conjunction of Wasowski's timeless performances with Chopin's forever enduring compositions known as the Nocturnes. These two extraordinary beings have created a music that sings of the Oneness of Being; a music that is as sweet as a "gentle rain of nectar" pouring from the "inner moon;" a music radiant with the mystery of "love."
There are seven energy centers throughout the body--they are called chakras.
Within the topmost center, in the crown of the head, the sahasrara,
there is a light, called "the moon of Consciousness" or "the
moon of mystery." Gurumayi has described this
inner effulgence as "the moon of the Lord . . .
your own inner Self. It shines silvery white,
with no blemish, ever pure, ever serene."
Saints sing of the gentle rain of nectar
that pours from the inner moon,
of the radiance of eternal
moonlight that is itself
music and love.
*
(Note: These photographs were made to be viewed in a dark tonal environment, with black
surrounding borders rather than white. Please try clicking on the images to see if the
images will be displayed in an alternative viewing mode, with black borders.)
Nocturne
The Photographs
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Nocturne #1 : Moonlit photograph : South Meadow and Pond
Nocturne #2 : Moonlit photograph : Tree trunk, pond & pond ripples
Nocturne #3 : Moonlit photograph : Cloths lines, pole, shadows
Nocturne #4 : Moonlit photograph : Two plastic water jugs on stairs
Nocturne #5 : Moonlit photograph : Two steamed windows looking out toward the meadow
Nocturne #6, Moonlit Photograph of a photograph entitled "Seeing with the Eye of the Heart"
Nocturne #7 : Moonlit photograph (Self-Illuminated Magnifying Glass)
Nocturne #8 : Moonlit photograph : Stainless steel sink
Nocturne #9 : Moonlit photograph : Still life with coffee maker, filters, water & juice glass
Nocturne #10 : Moonlit photograph : The ghost in the corner
Nocturne #11 : Moonlit photograph : North Meadow, fog over pond, suspended bird feeder
Nocturne #12 : Moonlit photograph : Puja (Still life with 3 framed photographs, book, etc.)
Nocturne #13 : Moonlit photograph : Steamed window and house plant
Nocturne #14 : Moonlit symmetrical photograph : "The Bird, Angel of Tears"
Nocturne #15 : Moonlit photograph : Raindrops on a window screen
Nocturne #16 : Moonlit photograph : A constellation of raindrops on the picture window
Nocturne #17 : Moonlit photograph : Moonlight & shadows on white plastic planter
Nocturne #18 : Moonlit photograph : 4 Garlics laid out to dry
Nocturne #19: Moonlit photograph : Plant with one golden flower
Nocturne #20 : Moonlit photograph : South Meadow pond and fog
Nocturne #21 : Moonlit photograph : Impression of a bird in flight left on our picture window
Nocturne #22 : Moonlit photograph : Chair, cloths, reading light in the corner of a room
Nocturne #23 : Moonlit photograph : Lamp near a corner bookshelf
Nocturne #24 : Moonlit photograph : Still life with Plastic cup & white card on table
Nocturne #25 : Moonlit photograph : Soap Bar in chipped enameled dish
Nocturne #26 : Steamed Window, with Red, after a summer evening storm
Four Inversions
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Flowers open every night across the sky,
a breathing space, and sudden
flame catching.
Rumi
Nocturne #26 : Inversed Moonlit photograph (see Nocturne #1 above)
Nocturne #27 : Inversed Moonlit photograph of a bird in flight left on our picture window (#20 above)
Nocturne #28 : Inversed Moonlit photograph (see Nocturne #11 above)
Nocturne #29 : Inversed Symmetrical photograph (see Nocturne #14 above)
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Introduction
(continued)
Symmetrical photograph from my project "The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . "
Brushed by Angels' Wings ~ The Mummer of Stars ~ The Vale of Tears
Alan Walker wrote about a concert Chopin gave in February, one year before his death, to which many of his friends were in attendance. The reviews that followed were typically glowing: "the mysteries of his performances" which often included extended improvisations on well known melodies and themes "had no parallel in our terrestrial sphere . . ." Many of Chopin's attentive listeners did not know what had cast them into their various trances. People would become nearly ecstatic over his performances. One reviewer wrote:
So do not ask how these masterpieces, great and small, were performed. We said at the outset that we would not attempt to describe the infinite number of nuances of an exceptional genius who has such a technique at his disposal. We will only say that the charm never ceased for one moment to hold his audience entranced and that the effect lingered long after the concert was over.
Chopin performed on the piano with a very delicate, sensitive touch which could only be truly heard and appreciated in a close, intimate setting. His boundless musical nuances were constantly pouring forth from his unique touch of the piano keys. Walker quotes the poet Theophile Gautier who wrote: "when Chopin's fingers touched the key's they seemed brushed by angels' wings.'"
Another reviewer referred to Chopin as . . . the ineffable artist, attached to this mortal world by the merest touch of a finger [his playing resembled] the sigh of a flower, the whisper of clouds, the murmur of stars."
One of Chopin's best friends wrote to the fragile artist after the concert: One is alone with you in the midst of a crowd; it is not a piano that speaks but a soul. And what a soul! Preserve your life for your friends. It is a consolation to be able to listen to you . . . in the dark days that threaten us . . .
Within days of that February 16, 1848 concert the French Revolution broke out in Paris. Chopin was so exhausted by the concert and his bout with influenza that he was in bed in his apartment for several days unaware of the horrible battles and killings that were taking place in the streets below him.
Chopin died eight months later. I was particularly struck by something Walker wrote regarding Chopin's funeral. The famous Funeral March, which Chopin had written long before he died, had never found an appropriate place in his process of publishing his works, thus it remained hidden in his collection of unpublished manuscripts until after he died. As fate would have it, the Funeral March was performed for the very first time in public at Chopin's funeral, in an orchestrated version prepared by Henri Reber. Walker wrote: "[Chopin] had no idea that he had penned music that would be used to mark his own passing from this vale of tears."*
That phrase "vale of tears" invoked the titles of two of my projects completed within the past two years; Maya's Veils of Illusion, and The Bird, The Angel of Tears . . . As you already know I decided to include a revised version of the photograph entitled The Bird, Angel of Tears in this project because of the large black bird we encountered on the day of the Full Lunar Eclipse. The image serves me as a powerful reminder of the ever present sadness and suffering which pervaded Chopin's life and Times as described in Walker's biography.
(*Note: I googled the phrase, vale of tears and discovered it probably came from the Bible, Psalm 84:6 which states: As they pass through the valley of tears, they make it a place of springs; the autumn rains also cover it with pools." The word vale refers to a valley one must pass through. ~ "The autumn rains" invokes an image of tears falling from weeping eyes. ~ Dante Alighieri used the phrase vale of tears in his famous poem Inferno.)
Interpretation of Composed Music
Chopin developed an international reputation for his solo piano performances. According to reviews published about his performances it seems he often took extreme improvisational liberties with the written scores he chose to perform, including his own. Each of his interpretations of the same one score could of course be quite noticeably different depending on the attitude with which he approached the piece on a given evening, and the impulses that compelled him to experiment with the limitless range of techniques available to him. He would invent and manifest spontaneous variations on themes in the midst of the performance of any piece he might have been playing. I am reminded of Jessica Duchen's comments about Wasowski's use of tempo rubato in his 1989 recorded performances of the Nocturnes:
Wasowski’s use of tempo rubato is also very striking, probably a little more extreme
than current thinking on Chopin would permit, but always applying the true
meaning of the term, even within his generally slow tempi . . .
Tempo Rubato is a term that refers to taking expressive liberty in a performance of a written composition--especially rhythmic variation, the speeding up or slowing down of a passage according to one's desires or impulses to change or reshape the written phrasing of that passage. Wasowski was a master of this, which he demonstrated in his 1980 recording of Chopin's Mazurkas and his varying the loud and soft passages according to his inner impulses is especially moving in the Nocturnes. I have heard it said many times that performing music of slow tempos and quiet passages is much more difficult than playing fast and loud. Both Chopin and Wasowski could play beautifully, with great feeling, with great technical expertise and invention in both slow and fast tempos.
Performing variations, improvisations, freely interpreting . . . all this is the very life's breath of creative, musical performance, and the same is equally true for visual artists. Chopin would become hypnotized by a great singer's ability to use the voice to create all kinds of subtle or dramatic transformational sounds and musical meanings. Artists working in every medium do the same, though many who love the arts may not know how to appreciate or identify the nuances which often are technically based. I wanted to take this opportunity to write some about improvisation as it pertains to photographic picture-making.
Music, Improvisation, Photography & Meditation
Music has been an inspiration for many photographers, and most famously Ansel Adams and Alfred Stieglitz. Stieglitz's 1923 series of equivalents entitled "Songs of the Sky" is particularly well known. Ansel Adams liked to use the metaphor that the photographic negative is like a musical score, and that every time he reprinted one of his well known images he allowed himself the freedom to interpret the image in a way appropriate to how he felt in any given moment, or perhaps in consideration of others' needs, etc. Adams was a master photographic technician, chemist, magician . . . that is to say, he had the full range of technical options available to him, and then some (like Chopin) . . . to make any changes he desired based on his many years of dedicated experience to the medium, and a finely tuned instinct for knowing what changes were needed or changes he desired to make.
*
In the late 1970's I made photographs in response to the jazz music of Steve Lacy. I especially loved his solo concerts which were an amazing display of his improvisational genius. (See my project The Steve Lacy Series.) Later I paid homage to the great jazz musician Theolonious Monk with a selection of images edited from my 1994-2000 Studies project. Both musicians were amongst the greatest improvisors of all time in the expansive tradition of jazz. I learned a lot about making photographs from listening to the ways these great artists transformed the musical themes they announced at the beginning of their performances. (See my listing of Music Inspired Photography Projects). Somehow I interiorize what I learn from listening to music, and that subtle knowledge becomes integrated into my creative process of seeing photographically with a camera, and then all the visual editing and adjustments that must be made after the negative or digital file has been selected for printing. Making photographs in response to musical experiences is itself a form of improvisation.
Steve Lacy spoke often about music as an independent force. He might say "The Music" would just take over at some point in his improvisations on the soprano sax. Of course part of Lacy's genius was his willingness to allow that force to take over.
I understand how good it can feel to relinquish control and experience that creative sense of freedom in "letting go," of "being played" by a powerful creative force. When I was working on the Lacy project, and listening to his music all the time, I had an amazingly vivid dream in which I was improvising with Lacy and other members of his band. I felt as if I had lost my sense of self and was simply in the flow the the musical experience. The music just poured out of me. I felt so totally free and one with the music and the unfolding improvisational dialogue I was sharing with Steve Lacy and the other musicians, a dialogue that involved undivided, focused Listening. The music just flowed on and on, taking us where It wanted to go.
I have had similar experiences (though not as dramatic) of flowing with the grace of my creative process while photographing or making photographic prints from my negatives or digital files.* In the most basic, essential terms, what is required is simply the willingness to surrender to that the natural unfolding of one's creative process. It is usually one's ego and intellect that gets in the way manifesting work of little consequence or too heavy in a known intention. What is most interesting about art is its surprising unknown meaning.
(*Note: See my two brief essays: The Straight Photograph & The Symmetrical Photograph which goes into some detail about the creative challenges of interpreting one's own photographs in terms of all the technical variables one is faced with when printing or digitally editing an image.)
*
I have written at length in previous projects about how my meditation practice and my photography have merged into each other, that photography has become a form of meditation for me, and a means by which I explore and contemplate the yogic teaches that spark my attention.
While working on this project, each morning before I meditated I would read Transformation : On Tour with Gurumayi Chidvilasananda, Volume II. It contains a series of related talks Gurumayi gave in 1985-86, which deals with some of the themes I've have been trying to articulate regarding improvisation in music and photography. Two of the talks were entitled "Deep Within Us Lies the Presence of God" and "Light of All Lights." In both talks she quotes from the Bhagavad Gita and then comments on those texts. Here, the Lord is speaking to his most devoted disciple Arjuna:
This whole world is pervaded by Me, O Arjuna,
In My unmanifest aspect.
I am immortality, and also death,
Existence and non-existence, O Arjuna.
. . . the light of all lights. . . seated in the hearts of all . . .
is said to be beyond darkness--knowledge, the knowable,
and the goal of knowledge.
Gurumayi's commentary:
One minute [the Lord] can proclaim, "I exist in all," and the next, "I exist in nobody." Who can be so free? Who can be so liberated, but the Creator Himself? It is this experience that we should have--being and not being at the same time.
Meditation is for us to experience the unmanifest aspect of the Lord. We can see the manifest aspect--people, trees, animals, birds; we see the play, we see the problems--everything and everyone. The unmanifest aspect is what we can't see, what we can's perceive. For this reason, our spiritual body has to become very clear, very pure, so that there is the experience of the flow of Consciousness all the time.
What is it that makes the senses function? The senses on their own are nothing; there's something else behind them. And this is the presence of light, this is the presence of the Truth, the presence of true inspiration. It is the inner inspiration which makes our eyes see and our ears hear.
(From Transformation, On Tour With Gurumayi, Vol. II, a SYDA publication)
*
How musical experience inspires pictorial form is very difficult to say or write about, for it is "Light Upon Light." Inspiration is based in seeing inwardly outward things. It is all so intuitive, so instinctual. But if a musical experience, a photographic image, a drawing, painting, poem . . . or whatever functions for me as a True, living Symbol, then at the very Heart of my experience there is the light of grace, the light that is beyond sense perception. And those images inspire me to make more images, to see with the Eye of my Heart.
*
I want close this section with a fascinating quote Walker provides in his biography that is relevant to our topic. It is taken from a review written after experiencing a concert Chopin had given on July 10, 1848:
We have never heard music which has so much of the air of unpremeditated effusion. The performer seems to abandon himself to the impulses of his fancy and feelings--to indulge in a reverie, and to pour out, unconsciously as it were, the thoughts and emotions which pass through his mind. M Chopin does not seek to astonish by loudness of sound or mechanical dexterity. He accomplishes enormous difficulties, but so quietly, so smoothly, and with such constant delicacy and refinement, that the listener is not sensible of their real magnitude. It is the exquisite delicacy, with the liquid mellowness of his tone, and the pearly roundness of his passages of rapid articulation, which are the peculiar features of his execution, while his music is characterized by freedom of thought, varied expressions, and a kind of romantic melancholy which seems the natural mood of the artist's mind.
The Nocturne, wrote Walker, is that "inner world of dreamy melancholy." Well, I agree that Chopin's Nocturnes are dealing with the "inner world," but "dreamy" implies to me a superficial romantic notion of melancholy. I am not interested is familiar sentiment or some clear idea. I long for the True, living experience that is based in inspiration, the light of grace.
Most of the photographs in this project were made in a realm of being that is between dark and light, night and day, above and below, inside and outside. Twilight is pervaded by a kind of light that is both visible and invisible, existent and non-existent. Alfred Stieglitz said he wanted to create photographs that "make visible the invisible." Great music, when one is performing with grace and Truly Listening with the Heart, makes audible the "Unstruck Sound."
As he improvises, Chopin seems unaware that we are listening to him . . . . .
he falters and stops. "Its not finished!" says Delacroix. "Nothing comes
to me," Chopin responds, "only reflections and shadows . . . I look for
a color, but can't even find an outline." "You will find them both,"
says Delacroix. "But if I find only moonlight?" "Then you
will have found a reflection of a reflection."
George Sand, Impressions et Souvenirs
Moonlight is sunlight that has been projected upon the moon's surface, made cool, silvery and slightly blue, then reflected back to us here on Earth. Perhaps what Chopin longed for was a music illuminated by the "inner moon," music so deeply interiorized and heartfelt that it cannot be heard with the ears of the senses alone, nor be understood merely with the intellect.
The photographs in this project often fail to provide "even an outline" of an object, or colors that belong to the world we know. (Note: Blue is an auspicious otherworldly color in Siddha Yoga. You can learn more about this by visiting my project The Blue Pearl.)
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Commentary
The photograph below was made in an other-worldly early morning light that existed somewhere between moonlight and sunrise . . . a self-luminous light that often appears to emerge from within things or places. Photographing in this kind of light requires an extraordinary kind of "seeing" based essentially in feeling and intuition.
As I was wandering around the house I happened to turn and look into the dark corner of our dinning room . . . I was quietly startled, perhaps more by what I felt than what I saw. There was a dark figurative presence, a living thing, in the corner that I had never seen before, though I could not really see what was there, in the darkness between the two walls. The figure did not seem human. ~ I became fascinated and decided to take a photograph, perhaps to help me see better what I could not see in that moment, in that light. As I was composing in the ground glass on the back of my digital camera I could make out the vague figure of a plant inside the corner space.
(Gloria, the day before, had moved a different plant into the corner space of our dining room area. I had not noticed the change until that next morning while making the photograph.)
The image is pervaded by a haunting aura of mystery that compelled me to look closer, more carefully, more consciously into the darkness of that space. ~ When I listen to Chopin's Nocturnes performed by Wasowski I prefer to sit or lie in a quiet place and listen with my headphones. This puts me inside the music, inside the performance, the sound. I cannot help but listen closely, carefully, intensely. I want to hear and enjoy all the nuances within the sounds, within the performances. There is so much subtlety, so much beauty in the music and Wasowski's performance. ~ I look at photographs in a similar way. To get inside an image that functions for me as a True, living symbol I absorb the image into the center or Heart of my being and listen to what it has to say to me. No words are spoken, but an interior silent dialogue does occur. This approach to experiencing photographs provides a kind of knowledge that is beyond saying, a kind of knowledge that is already seated within one's Heart. I call this very intimate way of experiencing photographs contemplation, and this mediative practice should not be confused with what I call "commentary."
This image appears at first as a nocturnal landscape illuminated by a "full moon" suspended over a wavy horizon line. It was made one early morning just before I started my daily mediation session. I sit on the floor in the corner of my bedroom next to a small table upon which I have placed the objects of my simple puja which consists of a white doily, a chime, and three small framed photographs which are attached to each other. This photo also includes, on the far left side of the table, part of a book I was reading at night: Walker's biography of Chopin.
Each picture frame contains a portrait: Gurumayi Chidvilasananada's image is in the middle frame, Swami Muktananda's image is in the left frame, and Bhagavan Nityananda is pictured in the right frame. These three great Siddhas (yogic saints, realized beings) constitute the modern day linage of the Siddha Yoga Path, founded in the 1970's by Muktananda upon the command of his beloved teacher, Bhagavan Nityananda.
These Great Beings are the human embodiment of that divine, creative power of the universe known as shakti. Gurumayi, the current head of the Siddha lineage, lives each and every moment of her life in the full, conscious awareness of her Oneness of Being, her union with God, the Absolute, the inner Self which exists in everything including every human Heart. Though the portrait images cannot be seen clearly, I can feel their palpable living presence, their shakti, their grace emerging from each of the photographs. ~ I have tried many times to photograph my puja but I never have been satisfied with the results. This "moonlit" image is a gift of grace.
There are several photographs in this project of the beautiful landscape behind our house. Just beyond our backyard is the meadow, and inside the meadow there are two ponds (which often appear to me as eyes which are looking at me); just beyond the meadow there is a long tapering woods. There are several other meadow photographs in this project which appear, just barely visible, as merely an atmospheric presence, through a window in the background. I have been photographing the meadow for the past twelve years. It's a constant living presence that is an ever-changing source of wonder and beauty for me. (Visit my ongoing Meadow project.)
The image (above) shares the same look and feeling as the puja photograph, though of course there is no "visible moon" in the picture. Some early morning fog can be seen slowly crawling down the valley and over the north meadow pond. Like the moon, the pond is present but in-visible. Suspended in the center of the picture space is our bird feeder which I fill each day. In this photograph it reminds me of a lighthouse that is gently casting a glow upon the fog. Though the image is dark, a subtle light and a living presence pervades the entire picture space. Perhaps the source of that light is the sun close to rising; perhaps it is the subtle radiance of the "inner moon."
*
In general the Nocturne photographs are more about feeling, about presence than they are about seeing things and places in the physical world. Similarly Wasowski's recordings of Chopin's Nocturnes are much more about feeling than they are about the notes on the page. It's as if this great pianist has become so completely identified with the music that his presence has become inseparable from the music Chopin wrote. The deep feelings of longing in his performances give the Nocturns a living, breathing presence. A similar longing which pervades many of my photographs in this project awaken in me the remembrance of my meeting with Gurumayi in 1987 and experienced her grace in my first 2-day meditation Intensive with her. The feeling of longing is located deep within my heart and the feeling is directly associated with love. In an inner vision that spontaneously occurred during the intensive I saw Gurumayi at the door of my Heart, pushing harder and harder with her own hands and arms, until at last, and painfully, the door opened. With the opening a flood of tears and intense feelings of love poured out of the open door, out of my very Being. (For a full more detained account of my experience of Gurumayi's grace in that first intensive visit part 1 od my project Photography and Yoga)
This gently effulgent version of the dark landscape image discussed above is my favorite photograph in this project; it's a perfect visual expression of my feelings about Chopin's Nocturnes and Wasowski's unparalleled performances of them. It's also a beautiful visual metaphor for the most basic of the yogic teachings I've been contemplating for the past thirty-five years: within all things there is the same one divine light, the light of the inner Self; an it dwells inside human beings in the unbounded interior space of the Heart. This teaching, which essentially is about the Oneness of Being, has become embodied in this image which functions for me as a True, living symbol, an image which conjoins inner and outer corresponding counterpart Imaginal realities.
The photographic technique know as Inversion has turned the dark image inside-out. We can see in this example how the darkness has been transformed and its interior light, which was only subtly present before in the darker version, has become an all pervasive experience of luminous beauty throughout. It's a visual metaphor for two aspects of the goal of yogic meditation which Swami Muktananda wrote about in his spiritual autobiography The Play of Consciousness:
"When beauty arises, its companion, sound, arises. As
sound emanates, you hear sweet and divine music."
I have found it an interesting contemplation to hold both thee dark and light landscape images together in my mind at the same time. I take great pleasure in seeing the two images merge into each other. Sometimes in their merging the two images dissolve into nothing visible, but an experience of presence pervades their Imaginal space(s) with the feeling of love. At other times the two images coexist as if they are the same one image, but without differentiation; both the dark and the light images sharing the same all pervasive inner effulgence: that "eternal light" which is itself "music and love."
In the sahasrara [which is located in the crown of the head]
there is a light, called "the moon of Consciousness" or
"the moon of mystery." Gurumayi has described this
inner effulgence as "the moon of the Lord . . .
your own inner Self. It shines silvery white,
with no blemish, ever pure, ever serene."
Saints sing of the gentle rain of nectar
that pours from the inner moon,
of the radiance of eternal
moonlight that is itself
music and love.
from The Light of the Guru, a 1994 SYDA publication
Dedication
_______________________________
This project is dedicated to my dear friend, Larry McPherson. For nearly sixty years we have been looking at each other's photographs and sharing the music we love most. Larry was the person who sent me the email recently about the new recording of Chopin's Nocturnes by Stephen Hough, so, essentially he was the "messenger" that helped bring this project into being. Just recently Larry told me that it was an old LP recording of Chopin's Mazurkas that had gotten him interested in collecting recorded music. He has since then heard many recordings of the Mazurkas and the Nocturnes, and he told me Wasowski's performances are his favorites, too. ~ Thank you Larry for all the music, all the photographs and all our many years of enduring friendship.
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Project Publication Date
& Gurupurnima
This project was announced on my blog's Welcome Page the evening of July 13, 2022.
On this date the moon reached its most perfect fullness & its most perfect brightest
of the year 2022. It is commonly known as the "Supermoon" but in
Siddha Yoga it is is known as Gurupurnima, the "Guru's Moon."
It is a most auspicious, sacred time.
Welcome Page to The Departing Landscape blog, which includes the complete hyperlinked listing of my online photography projects dating from the most recent to those dating back to the 1960's. You will also find on the Welcome Page my resume, contact information . . . and much more.
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