Drawing Down the Moon
Drawing down the moon is an exercise always fraught. Urban sophisticates in city parks with their schematic designs never know how close to the other world they may tread on spring evenings when the rumble of thunder and the strike of lightning are all it takes to awaken the sleeping spirit in the art.
My wife and I arrived at Harmony Park shortly before 8 this evening. The Revolving Museum in Lowell Massachusetts had advertised a “Full Moon Celebration” in the “Harmonic Center of the Universe”, which this evening was located in this old industrial city northwest of Boston. Food, music, and a 30-foot lighted sculpture by artists Chris Harvey, Olivia Robinson, and Jesse Stiles were on offer.
When we arrived we saw a softly glowing orb elevated on a tripod in a small urban park. Below it the acolytes and supplicants, worshipers and mere visitors quietly milled about. There was conversation and laughter, and food for sale at tables set up nearby. A chorus was about to take the stage in a corner of the park.
But something was wrong. A drop of rain on my cheek. A flash of light in the sky. A boom of thunder – and then another. The chorus stood on stage. They sang briefly. This was just the magic the elements had been waiting for. The deluge was instant. The air itself became water – everyone ran for the nearest cover; food vendors desperately tried to protect their wares, umbrellas popped open and were quickly caught by the wind; shouts mingled with thunder and the roar of pelting raindrops - my wife and I found shelter in an apartment doorway with a dozen other refugees - looking around the park we saw under every tree and in every doorway huddled masses yearning to be dry.
And then it happened. The orb came to life. Some animus, some libido, some creature spirit had been awakened by the tempest. The soft glowing electric lights that illuminated it before had been dashed to blackness by the storm, but now something new, or perhaps very old, was energizing it. The orb rose and changed shape; it thrashed and tore at its tethers, it became a beast, a tentacled creature, some sort of jellyfish or octopus at home in this suddenly aquatic world that had driven away the humans.
It roared and danced and postured and threatened us from atop its tripod, trying to break free while sodden knots of people cowered under their trees or in their tiny alcoves.
After some time of this the violence of the storm gave way to a light rain. We emerged from our shelter to bid goodbye to some of the others before heading to our car. As we did we glanced at the creature on the tripod. It was limp now, but every so often we saw a ripple or a gesture to remind us that it wasn’t dead - only resting.
(Orb schematic copyright Revolving Museum and respective artists; storm image copyright Peter Nelson)