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FROM ANDROMEDA AND BACK RADIO: SKIES THAT DO NOT FADE

I remember being in Chicago back in the day, listening to an FM rock station. After a bevy of alternative rock, the DJ suddenly put on the Waltz from Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake. At the art store where I worked, one of the young hipsters immediately yelled, "Tchaikovsky!" and began conducting with her hands. I'll never forget that moment. We had gone from, say, Throwing Muses to Tchaikovsky, and I remember thinking: How cool was that? Here was music making its own case. It didn't plead. It didn't demand. In its own way, it rocked. And then, after that glorious interlude, it was back to alternative rock. The funny thing was that the classical piece had not seemed out of place. It held its own. It brought to the table its own heft, its own weight. It wasn't preachy. It wasn't better than. It was simply another fiber in the fabric of the day. And maybe that's the way great music should be heard. Not fenced off by genre. Not placed behind glass. Not approa...
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TERRA FIRMA LINEUP: SHE CAME AS A MELODY

 

She saved a world.

Her reward was slavery.
For thousands of years she remained trapped inside what appeared to be nothing more than a great pane of glass.
Invisible.
Waiting.
Her captors had been defeated, but before they fled they left her behind. They were confident of one thing: humanity would never understand what they possessed. So they left spies behind as well, and placed her in their care — in case she was ever needed.
But otherwise...
she would remain what she appeared to be.
A piece of glass.
Freeing her would require more than breaking a prison.
Someone would have to find her.
Someone would have to understand her.
Someone would have to touch that part of her that sings.
She came to me first as something close to a melody.
And whenever I think about that quality in her, my mind wanders toward Maurice Ravel's Miroirs, and particularly its extraordinary third movement, “Une barque sur l'océan”—“A Boat on the Ocean.”
Listen to the music.
And you can picture her.
Gentle, fragile light.
A flicker...
then a rush of color.
There is tremendous power underneath it all, but Ravel rarely needs to shout.
That's the way I hear her.
I've lately been listening to Bertrand Chamayou's sublime performance of Miroirs, and his way with “Une barque sur l'océan” captures something particularly beautiful: the scale of the thing without sacrificing its delicacy.
The ocean is immense.
But the boat is still there.
Small.
Moving.
Not yet lost.
And perhaps that's why the music keeps bringing me back to her.
For thousands of years she waits inside her impossible prison.
For someone.
For something.
Perhaps for the one human being capable of hearing what everyone else has missed.
Her melody.
Whether that person ever arrives...
Well.
That's Terra Firma.

More from the Terra Firma Lineup: Butting Heads | La Jetée

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I'd love to hear your thoughts, so speak your mind. Leave me a comment or feel free to hit me up at: fromandromedaandback@gmail.com. And thank you!

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