An Enchanted Lake

…cold, malevolent, and fantastic as a fairy tale. 

Everyone’s so miserable today… said a colleague, and yes there was a milieu of grey in the air.

In part perhaps, due to the weather… and the media’s bounty of doomy uncertainty.

“It’s down to us…” I said in a rare moment of clarity. And it is down to us, to rise above the cold, malevolent prospects and grasp the sparkle, the fairy tale beyond the immobility of the dark teatime of the soul. A grander narrative.

This week I was lucky to hear Anatoly Lyadov’s – The Enchanted Lake, “A Fairy Tale Scene” thanks (again) to Petroc Trelawny and BBC Radio 3‘s Breakfast. Lyadov wrote to a friend about the piece “…how clear, the multitude of stars hovering over the mysteries of the deep. …no entreaties and no complaints; only nature –  cold, malevolent, and fantastic as a fairy tale.”

The piece grabed me. I love the idea of no proclamations, no fanfare, no brash bling. Only nature. Nature in its cold raw state… …the sparkle of hope can only be found when we add narrative to the nature, add character, meaning, prospects to the scene. Since early humans labeled the stars, and painted walls, and told stories of hope…  it is down to us, to rise above the cold grey doom and grasp the sparkle, the fairy tale, the bright breakfast of the soul. Celebrate a grander narrative tale if we can…