“CICADAE” Latin: Summer Season
The cicada knows vulnerability. It is a creature of insouciance, representing a life of song and chorus. The cicada has been identified in myth and folklore as a symbol of carefree living and immortality. Athena wore the cicada as a hair ornament. To the Japanese, the cicada is the arrival of the summer season. For this aphid, making good vibrations fosters making love; singing fosters community chorus; music is what they do in life.
I learned the spirit of song as I experienced the attenuation of profane silence. I learned the joy of curiosity as I experienced the deprecation of toxic shame. I learned that my vulnerability existed ideally in my chorus of community as I experienced the burden of those who could not bear it. The richness of my song was forged in the depredated silence around me. The tempest of my young life is the resolve of my vocal scale.
I have leaned on imagination to envision my life, for it has always been conceived first in my mind before it was borne into my reality. The youthful cadence that champions my imagination, weathered and denounced in early life, continues to guide my creative daimon. I am grateful for an ageless mind.
It is for this gift that I continue to sing like the cicada in a silent world and that is as it should be, for song is only heard in a silent, listening environment. A generative silence yearns for the melody of our life song.
…and all song is a story. This is my story.