Listening in the shadow of the eclipse
In one of the first audio production courses I took, way back when we were still cutting and splicing 8-tracks, I chose to do a short feature that I thought would be a challenge. I would take a visual spectacle and translate the wonder of it into sound. On February 16, 1980, I had experienced for the first time a total solar eclipse, with my hometown of Hyderabad on the rim of the band of totality, enabling us to view it through used x-ray films , makeshift keyhole cameras, and reflected in steel basins. The eerie silence in the middle of the day, the mysterious shadow bands, and the shining diamond ring, were all phenomena that at the time affected me deeply. I thought it would be a challenge to take something so dependent on seeing, and turn it into an audio feature.
It’s another matter that I had neither the skills nor the accoutrements to produce something that matched my sonic imagination—such as it was—and the effect ended up being comical (with a group of fellow students enacting a collective gasp and the soundtrack of Chariots of Fire thrown in for good measure) rather than awe-inspiring.
All this was a quick flashback last night as I sat up bleary-eyed to catch NASA’s live feed of the latest solar eclipse, which passed over much of the United States, attracting perhaps more attention than most eclipses simply because of where it occurred and the near-total mediatisation of all American life. Needless to say, watching an eclipse—or really, any sort of astronomical or natural phenomenon—on a screen is nothing, but nothing, like the real experience. Still. These days one buys into the idea that one can be part of that oohing collective even if you’re only imagining the feeling of “being there” (for instance, the Taylor Swift Eras Tour movie, now streaming too). Not entirely a bad thing. But that’s a topic of discussion for another time.
Having managed only to watch the first lap of the moon’s progression across northern Mexico, I chose this morning to binge on a series of podcasts that might catch me up on eclipse-related trivia, and was rewarded with some engaging listening. On a day-old episode of The Daily (which is no longer part of my own daily routine) was the charming story of a decades-long eclipse chaser, astrophysicist Fred Espanak, otherwise known as “Mr Eclipse”. On the heels of that, on the Culture Podcast, came the voice of the same newspaper’s inimitable Wesley Morris and others recommending songs for an Eclipse soundtrack—other than, if you were thinking it, “Here Comes the Sun”! Perhaps something to think about next time a solar eclipse comes around these parts?
Alie Ward was not going to be left out of heliomania, so naturally, her episode this week dealt with what she dubs “Heliology”—or what scientists refer to as Heliophysics, featuring two physicists who unpack the big star at the centre of our corner of the universe.
Of course, even as I write this, I know that this fascination with eclipses, and possibly related things celestial will disappear just as quickly as yesterday’s news, but there will always be a residual audience of astro-nerds whose ears will prick up at the sound of anything vaguely star-fall like. And for those, there’s a delightful episode of RadioLab, about the curious case of an almost-moon, that is a must-listen—but even for those who may not spend an inordinate amount of time gazing at the night skies, it’s a treat.
Postscript: I understand the next big daytime eclipse—the eclipse of the century--will pass over the historic city of Luxor in Egypt. Advance planning is in order, with an audio recorder in the bag.