A Waterfall of Falling Sounds that I Catch Dreaming

Video premiered at the [Alien] Star Dust 24 hour winter solstice event, streamed live from the Integratron Joshua Tree CA.

7.30pm PST, 21 December 2020

Yolande Harris (2020)

13’44” video and sound, single screen

Can our conscious listening effect the world around us? This dreamscape pulls together a collection of moments in sounds and images of the “super bloom” of wild flowers in California, wind in Joshua Tree National Park, a visit to James Turrell’s Roden Crater, full rapids at Grand Falls on Navajo and Hopi land in Northern Arizona, the fragile crystal crunching of a lava field near Flagstaff, and the liminal spaces of the Pacific Ocean coast of the Monterey Bay. The dream begins with sounds I recorded at the pediatric intensive care unit of Stanford Children’s Hospital, the organ being tuned in Stanford Memorial Chapel, and aeolian harp wind-blown in the desert. The image of the seaweed child was taken shortly after her brain surgeries. Other sounds include the voices inside Roden Crater and sounds recorded underwater on the Santa Cruz coast. There are times when, like the waterfall, I fall into a moment of my day and sense a tangible connection to planet earth, moments that lift me out of my everyday consciousness and into a suspended sense of awareness. The harp is my portal to this state of awareness, so here, at this moment of the global pandemic and climate crisis, I offer these sounds as a meditation on our interconnection with lives of all kinds, all of whom dream, and as a prayer for our connection to and love for our planet.