Sun Dancing

The Sun is blowing us kisses again.

There are auroras forecast for as far south as Alabama tonight (Friday the 10th). Michael and I are gonna head out to a fave dark sky spot and enjoy ’em.

And yes, of course I have written a song about auroras. I have seen three of them in Iowa, so far, and they are always incredible and magical and powerfully connecting events that make me feel like I’m a part of a vast, mysterious, terrifying and wonderful cosmic playground. Back in 1991 was my first, a hugely dramatic burst of firey red and brilliant green, exactly a week after multiple plasma physicists (who study auroras) were shot by an angry student at the University of Iowa. As an astronomer friend said, we lost about 75% of the plasma physicists in this country that afternoon. And in a display of the greatest level of cosmic irony, the sun sent a burst of intense plasma at the earth in time to nearly blow up the sky exactly a week later.

Tell me again that we aren’t all consciously connected to each and every thing in the entire Universe? Uh huh.

Here’s a song I wrote a couple years later (I was pregnant at the time, had to do the mom thing a while before I could get back to the serious songwriting). It’s way slower than I’d ever play it in real life – but the recording engineer told me, “Play everything slower than you think you need to because you’ll be nervous, and that will make you play everything too fast.” Well, he was wrong. And this is dirge slow, but there’s something compelling about taking the time to experience the majesty of such a colossal and unimaginably timely event, to spend some time acknowledging the lives lost, and the grief shared, as well as the beauty. Enjoy Blood Red and Ghostly Green.