Sweet Georgia Air

Sometimes I feel like people don't get me, and by sometimes, I mean all the time (sorry I am always this cliche'). I was sitting on my patio this evening enjoying the fall air and the smell of fireplaces in the night sky. It reminded me one of the reasons I moved up here. I live just outside of the mountains here in the south. It is the most incredible thing to experience the seasons. We didn't have that kind of thing by the beach growing up. Today I had been working in the theatre at the school with the lighting designer. I noticed how very minuscule details made a big difference in the emotion and feeling of a scene. I've studied music my whole life and understand the concept as applying to that, but with lighting it is challenging me to really use my eyes to determine and create beauty, when that never has been my strong suit. In music you hear it, and you feel it. My body responds to it. I dance, I sing, and I get chills. When I am somewhere in nature truly beautiful, for me, it's still not my eyes that capture it the best. Sound always hits me first. The silence of the woods, the trickle of a mountain stream, the roar of the ocean. Then the feel of it. Cold mountain air. It is crisp and you can physically feel how clean it is. Or, the stickiness of the sea breeze. The feel of the salt and sand sticking to your skin as the sun warms you, and in contrast the cool sand during the morning and night hours. Lastly, I can smell the beauty. The smell of ocean water brings me home. My favorite smell, though, is that of North eastern Georgia in the fall. That mountain air gets me every time. All of these senses have always outweighed sight. Sight can be captured in a photo, but no one would ever understand the beauty of the moment without having been there to hear it, feel it, and smell it. How do you compare the beauty of an autumn leaf to the feeling of rushing down a waterfall as if it were a slide? I have found it incredibly hard to really capture the color and texture and shading with light. I have a new respect for the people that do it for a living.