Spring has sprung recently- the days are getting longer, evenings are lighter and the sun was out last week and on Saturday, temperatures reaching mid- teens. At the weekend people were wearing shorts and sunglasses round south Manchester (it felt a little early in the year for shorts to me but each to his own).
While searching for something else I found Music To Watch Seeds Grow by Brian d'Souza, released in February. The seven tracks are ambient, a musical accompaniment to research about how sunflowers interact below the soil. Apparently in nutrient rich soil competing sunflowers exhibit spatial awareness and show a sense of co- operation- they share rich soil, avoid competing and position themselves to benefit each other.
'They deliberately root elsewhere to avoid conflict', Brian says, 'demonstrating that co- existence can be a stronger biological drive than dominance'. In other words, sunflowers reject the survival of the fittest.
Brian turned this phenomenon into music. The final track on Music To Watch Seeds Grow is Hector's Sunflower, a nine minute piece of twinkling ambient music made by capturing biodata from his son's sunflower and turning it into sound via his own modular synth. And if that isn't a good way to start the week, I don't know what is. Listen to Hector's Sunflower here. The whole thing, Music to Watch Seeds Grow 007, is here.
The sunflowers in my photo were in a neighbour's garden in 2022. Sunflowers have become part of the world of Isaac's death and his grave. In summer 2022 when sunflower season started I took some each time we visited him at the cemetery and they took on a some kind of meaning. The turn from winter to spring and the appearance of sunflowers in the shops is something I look forward to now each year. Someone left some Lego sunflowers at his grave last year and they're still there, adding a splash of colour through the grey of winter.
No comments:
Post a Comment