The Once-in-a-Lifetime Case of the Full Solar Eclipse

Today we are interrupting our usual broadcast of international sounds for a special show in honor of a rare event: as you are all aware, I’m sure, there will be a solar eclipse visible tomorrow right here in Portland, Oregon. Viewing time in Portland for the most sun blockage happens to be 10:19 AM.

Whether you are running toward or away from all the eclipse commotion, I want you to be in the right frame of mind to appreciate this rare and powerful event. So today I am presenting a soundtrack for the solar eclipse in two acts:  the arithmetic, and the ecstasy.

This first hour of music is dedicated to the arithmetic… the movement of celestial orbs. This is the eclipse before life on Earth… pure physics of light and inertia. Planetary motion… the heavens in their courses.

To express the profound mystery of it all I am dipping in to my collection of jazz, blues, and r-n-b; a rare chance for you listeners to hear me playing home grown music.

As you listen to this first hour, imagine NASA footage of the planets and their moons… feel the lonely majesty of their unending wandering rotations.

The second hour of today’s show is a musical expression of the ecstasy of the solar eclipse. This is the eclipse through human eyes… especially our visceral, historical, pre-scientific-revolution human eyes.

To really grasp the power of a full solar eclipse to excite the human imagination, we need to see it from the point of view of the ancients. Imagine yourself at the summit of a Mayan pyramid temple. In the sky, the moon is edging toward the sun, and a vast shadow is chasing across the landscape. Before you is a red-soaked altar, and an endless line of sacrificial victims, whose blood will ensure that the sun will again re-emerge today to begin a new cosmic cycle of life on Earth.

In today's second hour I offer you the frenzied percussive music of this raw human emotion. Let the rhythm carry you forward through this incredible spectacle of light and shadow, flesh and blood, fear and awe. Give yourself over to the drum, and the ancient fevered delirium.