Lux Aeterna

The light in the bandshell is sickly and flourescent. My skin looks pallid, I see funny spots when I blink, and it seems to match the air. There are no windows in here, just four bare plaster walls. The air and the light move too slowly here. If ever a place was stagnant, it's this one. It smells like greasy teenagers and valve oil. The carpet it damp with June humidity. The light in here is always just a little wrong.

At 6 AM in our apartment, the rising sun is blazing in our front windows. We leave the windows open overnight, and you can smell the dew in the courtyard trees just a few feet away. I usually spread out with my books and coffee on the floor. If you try to sit in the the chair the sun will peek over the building opposite us and nearly blind you until it passes overhead around 7:30. That sort of light is like washing your face after sleeping in the dark of our bedroom all night.

At the hall in Syr---e, the lights are far far overhead in the big vault over the stage. If I crane my neck back over the black cloth of my seat, the four big lights above me blend together into one huge glow. During performances you come out to warm up and the house lights show all the audience clearly. It's a funny sensation to see them all drift into shadow and black while the light that's on you stays as bright as ever. It's a brilliant white sort of light, so that the black ink of the music really pops out at you on your music stand. It smells nice onstage, unless you're on your fourth consecutive evening of Holiday Pops. There's a chalky sort of smell, and the clean hardwood floor of the stage.

At Roberts, I always tried to take the largest practice room on the third floor. The light overheard was just a single household bulb with a drawstring, but I think they took that out and put in flourescents a few years ago. I'd be up there from about 8 in the evening to 10:30 or 11 with a mountain of music on top of the piano and trumpets lying about in open cases, reflecting the lightbulb back. I'd pull up the blinds most nights, and watch the huge floodlamp on the Science Center. In the winter, you could see the snow coming down for 50 yards around that light, and you'd know what it meant for snow to fall "softly."

The light in our bedroom is a string of Christmas lights that wreathe the mirror on our dresser and then sprawl across my desk. I put up other lights around the bedframe and tacked up some more than hang in a line by the chinese lanterns in the corner, but it's nice to just have the one far-off set on. This is soft, dark light that reflects in my wineglass and just barely illumines your wife's face as she kisses you. Too dark to read by, just bright enough to talk at the end of the night in bed.

And then there is the June sunshine, blazing overhead in a spotless blue sky. I've gotten in the habit of sunglasses, but James won't have anything to do with them. I still remember how shocked I was to realize what a theologically traumatic event indoor lighting must have been. The sun is a star, after all, and it burns my sweating neck as I shepherd James back towards shade. He's pushing his bike around, playing with rocks, and loving all the vivid color of the real "outside" world. We'll go in shortly to the wood and carpet and indoor lights that we call home...it will be cool and he'll enjoy it. But if you're two years old, you prefer bathing in sunshine to bathing in water.