May 21 2007

Text By Greg Fallis

The rain falls softly, softly with a muted musicality. It spatters on the taut fabric of the umbrella, creating delicate quarter-notes that sound as if they were made of tiny pearls. It falls on the green grass with a whisper as melodic as the chirruping of twilight crickets. It falls on the sidewalk with percussive crispness, like muffled finger-cymbals.

To walk with an umbrella in the soft rain is to transform yourself into an instrument on which Nature plays a song. Sometimes it's a madrigal, a song of many voices. Sometimes it's a serenade sung in honor of the season. Sometimes it plays calypso, a joyous hip-slinging noise. A hymn, a cantata, a requiem, a carol, a ballad...the soft rain plays them all.

The music is there, is always there, if you listen. If you listen. If you listen.