Poetic Prose by E Eugene Jones Baldwin
While walking in mid-August I am surrounded by music wing-sawn cicadas the chorus, and I can walk a mile or ten miles, and the choruses minus a conductor sing the same song. My grandma Olive told me cicadas “are devils, them, singin’ about death.” She meant winter, no working her farm, months spent in isolation, the bible telling her sorrow, o pain, the wretched pain of sin. She also cursed the moon For “hanting” us. A musicologist traveling in the West in the 1800s spent weeks listening to tribes of Indians sing their ritual songs. He wrote that for a thousand miles the songs were haunting but all in the same key: D-flat. He told this to a Hopi shaman, and the shaman said yes, the First People sing with birds and the animals. And the insects. Beetles are love, rain to the land, singing in the key of life.
E Eugene Jones Baldwin is a playwright, journalist, fictionist, poet, and Illinois historian (Underground Railroad). He recently co-authored the book “A Black Soldier’s Letters Home, WWII.” His plays have been produced in New York, Chicago, and regional theatres.
5 thoughts on “Rainsong”
“singing in the key of life.” Love this line.
I lived in Florida in 2005 when the Great Emergence of cicadas sang. I had my bedroom windows open all night to hear their song. I missed them the next year, it was a very small emergence, and then I moved. I miss the cicadas song, and the bull ‘gators chorus, and all the wildlife of Florida, but your poem brought old memories to the fore, and I thank you. And your Grandma.
hoho ! Lovin this poem & the comment re Florida as well !
As a ‘collector’ & writer of yarns, tales etc this may be the first for me
re the amazing Cicada .. outstanding !
Do you know why film makers like me
do not attempt to capture ‘exterior location dialogue’
& at times ‘useable indoor dialogue’
& instead aim for & record ‘audio dialogue of guide track quality’
to facilitate Film/Video Editing & Post Production ‘looped dialogue’
for the Final Soundtrack ?
Thomas, I have no idea the answer to your why. My brother is/was the film person, but it would be cheating to call and ask him. It could be, perhaps, all the paperwork involved in permissions?
Along with aircraft – the Sound Of The Cicada is impossible to remove, filter, correct from Recorded Exterior Dialogue
The sound is ‘ambient’ & underlays Dialogue & other ‘motivated ambient sound’ ‘often called Room Tone’
Thus we can shoot & record Live Action voice dialogue as ‘Guide Track Only’ for ‘Looping’
ie re-recording Dialogue in a Sound Studio & the Actor of Actress may do this.. or other ‘Voice Talent’
As well, a ‘Foley Artist’ may enact ‘Sound Effects’ ie horses hoofbeats.. or breaking glass in a bar fight etc
Punch noises are often done with a Pork Roast.. same re water sounds.. & much is done with SFX such as laughter, fireworks, geese honking.
LOVE it. Thank you so much for the explanation. I had no idea. Especially about the Cicada. I knew about some of the sound effects from old movies of radio shows, and what little drama I took in high school. So much to learn–and only a finite number of years in which to learn it 😉