Dearest Readers,
It’s a gorgeous morning here in Montreal. I can see blue sky above the red brick houses across the way and the sun is pouring into the sunroom adjacent to the kitchen where I sit. Outside, the sound of buzzing cicadas makes me think I’m in the countryside on a hot summer day but the airplanes overhead and the traffic on the street assure me I’m in the city.
The Big City. When you live in Whitehorse any city beyond the borders of the Yukon is the Big City. I know a lot of Yukoners who can’t stand larger populations but I love ’em and I’ve blogged often about my fondness for connecting to that Big City buzz.
The small town connection is certainly more personal and that’s what I like about living in Whitehorse. Everybody knows everybody and if they don’t someone will introduce them. The Big City connection is less tangible. It’s not about knowing others. It’s about being an other with a million other others. It’s about a common experience.
Back in April someone sent me a link to a story about a composer named Eric Whitacre who organized a Virtual Choir. Many of you have probably heard of this idea or have already seen it (the YouTube video has well over a million hits) but I finally got around to checking it out yesterday. It got me thinking about this common experience and connecting.
Whitacre managed to get 185 people to sing in his Virtual Choir and despite the fact that each singer was by him/herself, alone in his/her home, the project was a fountain of togetherness. The composer had this to say about the depth of connectivity created by the Choir:
“People want to be together… [The project created] this sense of shared humanity… there is this innate and overwhelming need for people to connect and they’ll do it with whatever means are necessary or available to them… you can have all these people isolated all over the world sitting alone and they go to great lengths to connect.”
No doubt I’ve blogged before about my favourite quote by the great writer E.M. Forster who said, “Connect. Only connect.” It truly is the greatest human need.
And do you know how cicadas make that buzzing sound I’m hearing now? The sound that embodies the hot summer day like nothing else I can think of? By contracting and relaxing their abdominal muscles! Umm… kind of like singing? Indeed, “cicadas like heat and do their most spirited singing during the hotter hours of a summer day.”
Virtually, a choir.
Inspiring Message of the Day: There is Interconnection everywhere and I am a part of it: Technology/Nature, City/Country. I am a piece of the Great Puzzle of Life!
