MUSIC MOSAIC: A CITY IN RAIN

                                                           

      “Si Tu Vois Ma Mère” by Sidney Bechet immediately takes me to a place of twinkling lights, rainy afternoons, and the hustle and bustle of city life. The most prominent instrument, the saxophone, has a lazy interlude throughout the piece that beautifully juxtaposes the image of a rushing city in much the same way that rain does; you could almost say that the sound of the saxophone is personified into a soft, lethargic rain. The steady, heavy rhythm that permeates the background of the piece gives a sense of consistency and immortality, as if the city and the rain never stop breathing. Something so special about a city is that the architecture that makes up the scape and character rarely changes in structure or form. Rather than going backwards, cities build off of each other and consistently progress forwards. The architecture and culture become a combination of old and new, and the foundation never really changes. What could be a picture of a 19^th century Victorian home right after it is built may actually be a picture of that home in the 21^st century. A city keeps its integrity by maintaining the aesthetic of its history and people.

      Everyone sees differently. What inspired me to visualize a city in rain, may have inspired someone to visualize an ocean under the stars. The point is that we are inspired. We cannot let ourselves be restrained by trying to see a certain way... our creativity will fly out of the window and we will revert to seeing as others see, and who wants to do that . . . "I can't go out and try to see this way. I'll fail, I'll go mad. All I can do is try to gag the commentator, to hush the noise of useless interior babble that keeps me from seeing just as surely as a newspaper dangles before my eyes. The effort is really a discipline requiring a lifetime of dedicated struggle; it marks the literature of saints and monks of every order East and West, under every rule and no rule, discalced and shod. The world's spiritual geniuses seem to discover universally that the mind's muddy river, this ceaseless flow of trivia and trash, cannot be damned, and that trying to dam it is a waste of effort that might lead to madness" (Dillard). 

      With my collection of images, I attempted to represent the aesthetic of the song through the aesthetic of the photographs. A gloomy, rainy day in Salt Lake City was the perfect setting for my visual narrative of being a city girl for only a few short hours. Each photo should be viewed from the perspective of someone living in the city—perhaps commuting to work, meeting up with coworkers for a business lunch, or walking their dog. The muted hues of grey and white are contrasted with pops of warm blues, reds, and yellows to maintain the earthy tones that gloomy rain gives the world, whether indoor or outdoor. Each photo is contrasted with straight, parallel lines and curvy, windswept lines that attempt to epitomize the diversity of a city and the culture that is birthed within it. Rather than telling a consecutive, chronological narrative of the day that I spent in Salt Lake City, the photographs should exemplify the feeling of an everyday immortality that comes from a rainy world. The point is that this is a day just like any other, for any person, simply observing the world, quenching that curiosity of life in the rain, and relishing in the state of being contently alone.

Here is a link to the song...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zs_DD_7C8_A