Blog: Mozart's Starling

Featured image: Her Cape Caught The Wind (2019) by Christine Alfery and a Starling Murmuration

"every poet, every artist is an anti-social being. He's not that way because he wants to be; he can't be any other way. Of course the state has the right to chase him away ... and if he is really an artist it is in his nature not to want to be admitted, because if he is admitted it can only mean he is doing something which is understood, approved and therefore old hat - worthless. Anything new, anything worth doing, can't be recognized. People just don't have that much vision. So this business about defending and freeing culture is absurd.”    - Pablo Picasso. 

I am a child of the 60’s. It is part of my history, part of who I am. So when I read this quote, I thought – no wonder I think the way I do. No wonder I am fighting so hard to find the new, the unique, the un-coerced. It is all about freedom. Don’t entrap my spirit, my soul, my heart and mind. It seems to me, like it did to Picasso, that we need to figure this out for ourselves first – how to free ourselves - before we have any business defending something bigger than ourselves.

A wonderful friend recently sent me a clip from a book she is reading. She said it reminded her of the things I write about. I read the clip and thought – she is so kind, there is no way I could write something as beautiful as that. 

The clip was from “Mozart’s Starling”. It was inspiring and filled with so many beautiful images about the mystery of starlings gathering and swarming. They call it a murmuration. 

CLICK TO VIEW Flight of the Starlings: Watch This Eerie but Beautiful Phenomenon

Oh the mystery and wonder of this event when it happens. I always watch in awe as the starlings dance in the sky. It is that beauty that is the mystery . The freedom to be one, moving as a whole, and yet at the same time to be part of the many - I believe that is what Picasso was alluding to. 

It is this movement that so many try to mimic in real life. It is this movement that is like the wind - it is free yet it embodies so much more. 

 Her Cape Caught In The Wind by Christine Alfery (2019)

It seems to me we could all learn from the starlings, and likewise from artists like Picasso, how to free our souls and spirits. One at a time, uniquely, and yet at the same time function and create beauty without losing that freedom as a whole.   

Needless to say I am going to read "Mozart's Starling."