Moonlight
Clair de lune or “Moonlight,” by Claude Debussy is a classical piano piece originally inspired by a poem by Paul Verlaine, in which he describes the inner world of the human being as joyful and fleeting, as beautiful and sad, like lovers dancing, masked under soft moonlight, with birds dreaming in dark trees and fountains crying in joyful ecstasy. We hide ourselves under masks of socially accepted platitudes, dancing our truth in the night, with only a distant reflection of the sun to see by–we reveal ourselves only in our uninhibited movements, our art, our way of being when no one else sees. Whether fears rule, making us angry and oppressive, or love at times, is allowed to dictate our steps, what lies obscured by our masquerade is our truth. We are only and wholly love.The heart either shines or is made to be buried–but never is it irrelevant. Those who turn cold and inflict harm do not lack a heart, they lack its recognition, the ones who love without regard to whom they give their love have hearts that do not waver and cannot be hidden, only temporarily distorted. Always, our hearts, our souls are there, seen or unseen, creating beauty or lost in dark. The melancholy of worldly beauty lies in its passing nature. Yet, it is this which makes the tangibly beautiful so precious–revealing forever in its contrast. The material does not last–whether a moment, a dance, a kiss, an eighty year love story with all the happiness and joy afforded to a human being–it is temporary in physicality, eternal only as light across the veil.In this, we may choose to find lack, loss, longing and sorrow, or a neverending reflection of the soul’s momentarily exposed radiance in solid form.“The soul is a chosen landscape,” said Verlaine in his Moonlight poem. The sadness that comes with human life is only a temporary disturbance, the rippling of the dark surface of an eternal and peaceful lake–only in the broken calm, we are able to distinguish lake from sky. Heaven from earth. Life from infinity. In this mirror we find that which we carry within, and may choose whether or not to reveal; the essence of all, the reasons for pain. We see love, with no end and no beginning.
