Music in the Sky
"There is nothing more musical than a sunset."
— Claude Debussy
In harmony with the Georgia O’Keeffe quote I posted yesterday (“I want real things… music that makes holes in the sky”), I am posting a favorite Debussy quote as well.
And with his words, of course, I include some of my sunset photographs from over the years.
I gathered them all up (mostly from my Instagram account) on Thursday night to the sound of fireworks booming all around me.
It was ten o’clock at night. I scrolled through hundreds of images as I sat in my car in the parking lot of a movie theater one town away. My recently-turned teenage son asked for a ride there so that he and his best friend could see a movie. At thirteen years old, they had no interest in my joining them to watch. Lucky for them (or me?), neither did I.
I was happy to take them, and driving home just to turn around and pick them up again seemed pointless, so I decided to stay put and do something creative with my time while waiting.
It was a perfect evening… cool and refreshing for July. Windows open to the breeze and the music of fireworks in the sky, I began my quest… the easy search for the many images I created over the years of one of my favorite things to look at and photograph.
Here’s why.
Imagine if the artist who paints the sky painted it only one time. So every time we drove to and from work (or walked underneath skies above), it looked exactly the same. Or worse, what if it was never painted at all… was just a perpetually blank blue canvas (which, of course, is a beautiful thing in and of itself when, from time to time, we’re blessed with clear blue skies).
What if, instead of just one, there were three paintings… one each… for morning, noon and evening. But only these three. One sunrise, one midday cloudscape and one sunset. Even if masterpieces, would we not tire of seeing the same three every single day?
In my opinion, the sky… the way we see it with the naked eye… is one of the greatest gifts we have. It’s right up there with music and flowers and human touch.
What reminds us more than the sky can that things never stay the same… are constantly changing?
This is a reminder I have been clinging to lately.
Oddly enough, I woke up this morning to find that one of the photographers I follow on Substack was unwittingly sending me that very message when he restacked a 339-day-old note that said this…
“If there's something I'm sure of at this point in my life, it's that everything changes, and nothing lasts. I say that to myself all the time, and it's true. When you know that, even the struggles are bearable.”
— Andy Adams
I’d already been tearful from reading something I wrote privately. Then I came here to work on my post about the ever-changing nature of the sky (sunsets in particular), and found his note. Whatever that is (serendipity or something other), I will take it. One reminder from one source is singly good. The same reminder from two separate sources is exponentially better.
So if you’re like me, needing the encouragement that things don’t stay the same (which can be both painful or relieving, sometimes even simultaneously), consider this a third reminder (after the sky’s and Andy’s).
Nothing stays the same. And even when the skies are stormy, there’s often beauty there too.
I know how cliche it sounds to say that. But just because it’s been said countless times before doesn’t make it less true. Sometimes it’s the things we see and hear the most that we need to be reminded of… to knock it out of the land of platitude and back into the land of effective nudges that shape our attitude… and, dare I say, even change the course of a day.
I ended up falling asleep in my car Thursday night… waiting for my son and his friend to return from their movie-viewing. I found it interesting that I could fall asleep to and stay asleep through the sound of fireworks booming all around me. Yes, it was 11pm, but still… if I’d been in my bed asleep and such a sound had gone off in a single instance, it would have abruptly and rudely awakened me. But somehow, the repetitiveness of the booms (some sounding almost like gunfire) lulled me to sleep… a sort of music of its own. I can’t remember a more peaceful nap (nor a stranger nap) than this one.
Maybe it was viewing all of these sunsets… they put me in a sort of sedated state.
Or maybe I was just very tired.
I had to work the next day (yesterday), and was once again very tired last night. Thus my reason for finishing up my post on this Saturday morning.
I hope the sunsets here in my post, as well as any you take the time to gaze upon will prove to be the same… relaxing and remindful…
and… musical.
Here are a few galleries of several more sunset photographs I made, starting with the most recent sunset I gazed upon after leaving the grocery store. (Is it just me, or have some of the most beautiful sunsets you’ve ever seen been on display while walking to or from your car in a parking lot? It’s a thing… and a super cool thing if you ask me.)
“There's a sunrise and a sunset every single day, and they're absolutely free. Don't miss so many of them.”
— Jo Walton
Thank you for looking, and more so for seeing. ✨