“Once you have tasted flight, you will forever walk the earth with your eyes turned skyward, for there you have been, and there you will always long to return.”
Attributed to Leonardo da Vinci
I’m Rachel, a singer, writer, editor, teacher, and fan of the earth.
I created this site to celebrate the ephemera of existence. Maybe it’s music today, a bird tomorrow, some words, a photo, something to eat. I find awe in the quotidian, and I want to share it with you.
I do more than one thing. I have a separate professional website for singing, but this is a place where I’ll explore the connections I observe across the spectrum of experience. These are my personal reflections about music, nature, words, beauty. If you like my work enough to own it, there are opportunities here for that as well.
It was a long time ago that I first wrote something in my journal about ephemera. I have always been fascinated with encountering the transcendent in the mundane. I seek out those encounters actively, passionately, and I love sharing them.
I’m a serious birder and amateur naturalist. The photos are visual ephemera, easy to show, and I’ll be sharing more of my photos with you. But there’s more that I can’t show with a photo.
My life has been full of music, of song. And for the most part, the music I make as a classically trained singer is live, one-time, ephemeral. I have made recordings, of course, but like seeing a photo of Vincent’s Starry Night or taking a virtual tour of the Roman Forum, recorded music is a shadow of live music. During the COVID-19 pandemic, musicians like me are suffering.
This space is a partial reaction to not being able to make live music for an audience. I will use the words I have to reflect on my encounters with music. As a singer, I have also had intimate encounters with words. I study the poems I’m singing, synthesize them, get to know the characters or scenes, and decide which aspects I find relatable enough to be able to interpret and portray them to an audience. This sort of closeness to words is one of the most gratifying parts of the music I make, and I think it is one of the more overlooked aspects of what a singer does.
What this isn’t
- Program notes based on music research
- Scientific exploration of the natural world
- My journal (that’s private!)
There’s my little manifesto. Let’s go on an adventure.
…at base, science is no more than an investigation of a miracle we can never explain, and art is an interpretation of that miracle.
Ray Bradbury (From the story June 2001 – And the moon be still as bright in The Martian Chronicles)
