Observations

This week I've been thinking and doing a bit of research on a couple of topics. Those posts, however, are not yet ready, so this week I will share a few observations I have made recently (you can take this preamble as a warning for the slight chaos of this post).

I noticed in May that the red maple tree outside my window was performing an autumn-in-reverse trick: the deep red leaves were turning summer-green.

As I played the piano this evening, I found myself once again reflecting on the relationship between time and music. Music, more than almost anything else, makes a person loose track of time. Yet music is distinctly bound to the limits and structure of time: it is art and expression that only exists in time. Thus it both frees from time and is bound by time. There is a little clock that sits on my piano. Within a year after I got it, it stopped ticking. It seemed somehow appropriate and I have left it that way ever since.

While walking through the woods and along the roads last week, I saw these beautiful wildflowers with large clusters of purple-pink flowers on tall stalks which give off a fragrance reminiscent of lilacs. I learned that these flowers were the milkweeds I was familiar with from my fall walks. It was almost strange to think that those green meadows and roadsides would be full of rattling pods and silky seed-parachutes by September. Funny how I never knew that before, and how it has changed my perception of that fascinating plant. I know there is some parallel to people in this.

Perhaps it's just the way that some people are different from others, but I have a strong suspicion that those who do art see things differently. I am convinced it is because they look at the world differently.