Week 4: Moonlight

When I need some time to myself and for my thoughts, I like to do one of two things: either just drive around or go to the beach at night. One night this week, I decided to do the latter. I love the beach at night. Nobody is around, you can hear the splashing of the waves on the sand and the rocks, and the soft wind brings a chill to the humidity of the water. It feels as if my senses are heightened, and I am super alert to both what is around me and what is inside me. It is a magical combination of peace and grandeur/power. I go there not to empty my mind, but to allow myself to turn away from the lights and technology I otherwise am surrounded by, and give my thoughts a chance to be heard (by me) without distractions. I go there to organize my feelings and find a way to re-center myself. Like the division of characteristics of the night time beach, my emotional experience is split equally. It is an overwhelming task to bring forth the inner dialogue you push to the back… and so in doing do, I am overpowered by my thoughts (or the amount of them), but at the same time at peace with myself for allowing the time to contemplate about them. I don’t leave the beach peaceful and content in my heart—often quite the opposite… however, my mind is grateful for giving myself this time.

After all of that rambling, I can get to the picture. This moment of the bright and clear moon reflecting on the ocean and creating a rippled, not so clear reflection, I think depicts the sentiments that I had during my experience at the beach that night. I also love the amount of darkness, and how it almost swallowing everything but this seemingly small light source and a path of light reflected on the water that it creates. I also love that quality of the moon, and that it doesn’t reflect as a small circle on water, but rather, as a strip of light.

Clearly this image inspired me in more way then one, and I’d love to try to recreate it on stage, and it would be super interesting for me to choreograph movement based on this concept of split experience that I so long-windedly described.