Sotto Voce
Washington · USA
There are waterfalls that overwhelm you the instant you meet them. They demand your submission by sheer volume and power, drown you under a relentless torrent of decibels. These juggernauts hammer their impressions forcefully into the sheet metal of your psyche, their roars reverberating in your head and rattling your chest long after they've faded from earshot.
And then there are the quiet ones. The ones cloistered in mossy alcoves or ensconced in secluded glens. They’re the overlooked gems that announce their presence not with billboards but with breadcrumbs. The ones that speak in subtle whispers but whose messages are all the more compelling for it. There’s a sense of leanness and economy in form, an instrument designed for melodies clean and free of extraneous noise, a visual and lyrical exercise in concision.
These are the ones that beckon you to take a seat, set your cares aside and your troubles adrift, and stay a while. In the presence of such repose an attentiveness germinates where it might otherwise be befouled by noise or preoccupation. It extends outward at first...an awareness and appreciation of the intricate network of rivulets cascading down the rock face, of the unremitting pitter-patter of softly falling water, of the gentle rustling of leaves in the windswept trees, of the coolness of the mossy rock beneath your hand. Then, imperceptibly, the tide turns inward. And it’s in these quiet spaces where my sensate self is rediscovered and reinvigorated in a process I can’t fully lend words to but know and trust to be true.
People are sometimes curious why I wake up so early to seek some semblance of solitude in wild places. Photos happen, yes, but so much more. It’s an answer to an indistinct call, a decrypting of a message spoken in soft undertones that I lose every now and then in the welter and humdrum of the everyday. But, when it’s quiet, the music comes through clearly...
Delicate, rapturous, and pure.
