shifting light

After a week's break it seems that many couples have been crying. Some took their tears to Italy and let them unravel in bowls of oiled linguine, others defrosted those of illusion into those of truth and separated in an Amsterdam market.

Last night we were raw. I believe Mozart received and we gave our new blood in a communion of musical home-coming.

Julian is finally with me in Salzburg. Bouncing along on a bed of quavers, I glanced over to his halo of ringlets in the sixth row, saw him beaming at the fourteen Mozarts slipping down the mirrored set into the reflected image of the pit, and was content.

No more mis-timed skyped descriptions necessary.

Then, during Mitridate's most moving aria, a member of the audience chose their moment (once more, it happens most nights) to collapse or even pass away. Chairs were scraped and temporary structures kicked in the attempt to get the body down. Doctors in the house rose up from music infused vacations into white coat mode, and family members carried a leg or held a head.....

Meanwhile, in the pit, we continued playing, mechanically at first. We were being confronted by our fears of death - thinking of father, mother, lover or child being That Man with the heart attack. Gradually our bass line became a meditation upon death and thus, eventually, a celebration of now; of life.

Today Julian and I took our weary selves to Fuschlsee where we attempted the three hour 'rundweg' around the lake. We giggled at places signposted Gnigl, ducked our naked torsos (our dry shirts squished into the back-pack) under pine trees for protection from the rain, attempted to run whilst our feet sloshed in their Birkie boats, tripped on damp roots. We were alive and wet. Slowly the lines of stress in my love's painted-out face were washed away by nature's very own tears; the creases which had seemed fixed in indelible oil becoming a moving watercolour; Shifting Light itself.

Peter Sellars, when he directed us in 'Theodora', talked of the different quality of tears: The 'woe is me' tears and the tears of release.

Today nature wept upon on us and we were washed clean.