Enchantment — Einaudi and Philip Glass

An inner journey…

I have yet to know how to control Alexa very well, though my son gave it to me as a gift several years ago and I listen often. But the music keeps coming on that I didn’t ask for intentionally. I have supposed it is my voice, for I’ve lived in many places and my accent is a mix and I think Alexa has doubts. Thus, when I asked to listen to the themes of some television shows, I was given instead the work “Experience” by Ludovico Einaudi and “Walk to School” by Philip Glass. Both took me on unexpected journeys into enchanted worlds…

I knew Glass well but had never consciously heard of Einaudi. His “Experience” was haunting, and I felt a slight resonance with Michael Nyman’s score for The Piano in it, in some moments. It was enough to send me to listen to that film’s soundtrack and I discovered The Piano’s main theme was sourced from an old Scottish ballad — Gloomy Winter’s Noo Awa’ sung here by The Weavers on YouTube. Just below that listing, I saw one of my favorite albums, Sting’s A Winter’s Night… Live from Durham Cathedral, and then I went back to Einaudi and listened again, loving it, feeling as if I had been, or still were, in a medieval mystery play, an interval of allegory in sound…

I have no idea how my query to Alexa conjured Philip Glass’s “Walk to School.” It comes from his theme for Tales From the Loop, which, though a sci-fi fan, I had never seen. Glass said he was instantly mesmerized by the paintings of Simon Stålenhag that were used as the focus for this sci-fi drama. He said it reached a spirituality he could access, that mattered to him.

So I looked up the show. One critic said it was retro-futuristic, which didn’t help, but then I read how writer and showrunner Nathaniel Halpern was inspired by Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson with its searching vision of loneliness and isolation in the characters of a small town. I’d studied that book long ago, the stories of loss and unknowing. Thus, now I must attend to watch the series, though it had but one season.

And there was more. Glass’s theme for Tales from the Loop has, so curiously, a haunting piano opening. I also learned some of the instrumentation that was used for the music overall, the use of a recorder, a medieval instrument, and something called a lithophone, creating musical notes by hitting stones with hammers.

Learning this was a bit startling. Much of my fiction refers to the Neolithic era one way or the other. I have spent time before dawn alone at Stonehenge and explored other monoliths and long barrows from that time. A recent book I wrote focused on the sounds ancient rocks make when struck — it is at the heart of a modern mystery. Then, too, I own a Native American recorder, which I am learning how to play.

Synchronicity? Vibrations converging? I know one thing most of all. Nothing is ever a coincidence, even if we do not always know the why of it, or even if we never find out.

For a few hours, I was immersed in all the above, aware in each moment how the inner journeys we take reveal, always, our ongoing, astonishing connection to All That Is.

Regina Clarke is a writer of mystery, fantasy, and science fiction. The Shawangunk Mountains she can see as she writes are part of the Appalachians, the oldest on earth. She’s on Twitter @ReginaClarke1 and is the author of Voices from the Old Earth, Guardians of the Field, and MARI (the book where my heart lies). Her website blog frequently explores the ideas of hope and inspiration.

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