I can’t stop myself from trying to capture the beauty of fall foliage, although I end up deleting most of the photos I take.
I’m no photographer, for starters; just someone snapping pics on my smartphone. But more to the point: how does one capture the essence of beauty? I find it’s more a matter of what I feel when I gaze at the foliage, than whatI’m seeing.
What I feel is the urge to be those amazing colors, against the intense blue sky…the very essence of autumn, to me at least.
These last two photos are of the sight that greeted me when I stepped out of my car at work today. Except it was a hundred times more vivid in real life.
I guess the urge that I feel to be the colors, the leaves, the sky is a sort of reminder, from the part of me that remembers what it was to be one with all that is…and can’t wait to get back back there.
After my positive lyrics, raise-the-energy-through-dance phase, I managed to get myself back on track enough to return to SF State University and finish my undergraduate degree in flute performance. Thus began the intensely classical music period of my personal music history.
Three specific instances capture what I now believe was the true significance of this phase of my life…
The first was when I went to the library at SF State to complete a homework assignment for a music theory class. This was waaayyyy back when you had to go into the library, check out the vinyl LP, then take it into a little room in order to listen. I had been procrastinating for some weeks, but finally forced myself to go do the assignment.
Well, I dropped the needle and started listening to the first movement of the Brahms violin sonata #1 in G major…and promptly burst into tears. I had noidea what was causing such an deeply felt response, but I sat there and played that first movement over and over again. It was as if all the beauty in the world was coming through the opening measures of that sublime melody and my heart simply couldn’t contain it.
I finished my undergrad degree that year and went on to get my Master degree in flute performance from the San Francisco Conservatory of Music. I played in orchestra and chamber music ensembles, did recitals, and played lots and lots of weddings and other “gigs”. I especially loved playing the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, Tschaichovsky, Dvorak, Prokofiev, and other favorites too numerous to list!
Living in San Francisco as I did, I also spent a fair amount of time attending concerts at Davies Symphony Hall and seeing the ballet and opera in the War Memorial Opera House just up the street.
The second powerful memory from that time was a San Francisco Ballet performance of Stravinsky’s Firebird, in which the choreographer depicted the Firebird as a revolutionary male figure rallying his partisan comrades. It was downright stark, with a bare stage, drab partisan costumes, and a simple red unitard for the Firebird. But it captured the essence of Stravinsky’s score and amplified it in a way that was absolutely thrilling to me. I still remember it all these decades later (the video contains only the last five minutes or so of the ballet, but you might be able to get an idea of the power of it all).
The final memory I want to relate took place in Davies Symphony Hall at the end of the London Symphony’s performance of Mahler’s Fifth Symphony. I haven’t said much here about Mahler, but his music really spoke to me in those years. And the Fifth Symphony…!
Well, suffice it to say that at the end of the performance I sat in my seat unable to move, I was sobbing so hard. It was actually embarrassing because that’s just not the typical behavior of symphony patrons! But I couldn’t do anything different because I felt like the music had turned me completely inside out — mind, heart, and soul.
In retrospect, I believe this is the significance of this period of my personal music history. Music had helped me raise my energy; now it was helping me crack open my heart and ignite the deep yearnings of my soul.
