Insufficient
Sep. 17th, 2005 06:39 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I would like to be able to paint sky such as I saw last night. I can't even draw, which is one of the reasons I was drawn to words. But my words can't describe that tumbled drift of variegated light and shade, or the satiny quality lent those clouds by the concealed moon. And yet paint could never capture the sound I heard while gazing at that sky-- a sound like blown sand brushing paper, which I knew to actually be the sprinklers irrigating the orchard at the end of the block. Music might paraphrase that sound, and less effectively the darkness in which it resided. Music might also paraphrase the sound of the air's movement turning the trees restless, and the shot-like report and trailing echo of an acorn hitting a rooftop. But neither paint nor music could convey the scent of damp wood and decaying vegetation and chilled earth which rose through the air, aspiring to that higher wind which twisted the clouds and sent them north, curled and billowed them hour after hour. No artifice could convey the look and sound and scent of last night, or the feel of the ephemeral air escaping. You had to be there.