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"Seeing a partial eclipse bears the same relation to seeing a total eclipse as riding in an airplane does to falling out of an airplane," wrote Annie Dillard in 1982 after seeing an eclipse from a mountainside in California. Last April, we lucky souls here in Vermont experienced a total solar eclipse. Now I have never fallen out of an airplane, but she is right. Standing on the lakeshore with a group of friends, we anxiously watched the sun being slowly obscured by the moon on a sunny afternoon. At first it was exciting and then seemed to be taking longer than it should. Nerves. As the moon's shadow expanded, the visual gave way to the physical. Our warm afternoon was getting kind of chilly. As the sunlight waned, colors became less vibrant, vital. A red shirt looked like dried blood. The green of the trees became sepia toned at an increasing rate and the sense of something impending grew. This is all cool and stuff but... Birds that were merrily singing on a spring day suddenly stopped in the same way that you don't notice the neighbor's lawnmower until he stops mowing. Colors drained more. The light was platinum instead of gold. Twilight at 3 in the afternoon. The sun was nearly gone. Only a sliver remained and you could stare right at it. I felt strangely afraid. Colder. Prickly. Looking west across the lake a wall of darkness was rushing toward us at 1500 miles an hour...
In Norse mythology, Fenrir, the monstrous wolf, pursued the sun and during an eclipse, devoured the sun. That's how this felt. Devouring. The world could end and it will feel just like this. The gods are angry and it is all over right now. The word "eclipse" comes from the Greek verb, "to abandon, to darken, to cease to exist."
Some of us were struck silent. Darkness fell, empty and private. Stars appeared. Tears on faces replaced the chatter. The black hole in the sky was ringed in white with two small red flares. Across a couple lawns, a small group on the beach cheered, for a moment. My consciousness left this century and abandoned what I know of science and retreated back five millennia to a shepherd in a landscape experiencing this impossibility. My lizard brain kicked in full force. This is the end. Staring directly at what can never be looked upon, time seemed to stop. Night. Stars. The white ring. The red flare. The silence of the world. We. Are. Lost.
There is a stone in Ireland that researchers claim holds a record of an eclipse on November 30th, 3340 BC, and a Syrian clay tablet records, accurately, an eclipse on March 5th, 1223 BC. Anaxagoras, a Greek philosopher, came up with a surprisingly scientific explanation of the arrangement of celestial bodies around 500 BC. We have the word "syzygy" to define this alignment. (Any other words have three y's and six letters? There is a piece for sale on my website with this name, btw.) But, back to the lizard brain part. The entire experience was shattering. My verbal fumbling about that afternoon is the falling out of the airplane. If you haven't seen a TOTAL ECLIPSE, you won't understand. Metaphor helps. Therefore...
This artwork, "Totality" and its siblings, "Corona" and "Nosara" are the first round pieces I have made in 25 years of making these light sculptures that rule my time on the planet. Up to now, squares and rectangles were the whole program. I like this format and their immediate reference to what Shakespeare observed, "the eyes are the windows to the soul." The black hole of an eclipse, the dark star, the pupil center and the iris surrounding are begging for more focus in the future. I'm all in even though these discs and their round frames are a pain in the butt to make. The looking out at the miracles of reality are perfectly matched with the looking in to the "windows" William celebrates. "Wide-eyed" could hardly be more apt.
Please share these missives and my art with anyone who needs a little light in their day. We are soon to release a compilation of these blog things that I have been scribbling for 15 years. Who wants one? Volume One is called "The Iridescent Veldt". In the meantime, buy art. You know you need it.
Happy summer y'all. Get outside and play till it hurts.
B Mac And Sarah the Fifth
P.S. And once my lizard brain lets go and I return to my constant fascination, a reminder: The surface of the sun is 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. That corona, that white ring that we can only witness first-hand during an eclipse, is one to two million degrees a thousand miles above the sun's surface. Can't make this stuff up.
P.P.S. And for those of you that read all these. Moon, sun, what's next? How about the 15 quadrillion spiders on our planet. Yes? No?
P.P.S.S. And lastly, November 30th is my birthday AND Sarah's too. Hmmm...
