This morning in Jiangsu, the sky was clear. I thought I might see the Mid-Autumn moon tonight.
At five in the afternoon, the weather answered with a downpour. Wind drove the rain across the streets as people hurried home for dinner. Calling it heavy rain would hardly do it justice.
By a little after seven, it had passed. The sky cleared, and the moon was shining above us. I stepped outside my front door tonight and took this photograph.
Earlier, when the clouds gathered, I had thought of a line by the Tang poet Zhang Jiuling: “The bright moon rises over the sea; far apart, we share this moment.” I imagined that someone elsewhere might see what I could not. By evening, the sky had changed again. I could see the moon myself.
I made a video for Liang Xiao Yin, “Prelude to a Fine Evening.” It opens with an animation for Long Qin Zhai: two dragons fly around a pearl. As I watched them, the pearl began to look to me like a moon. The moonlit scenes that follow were made with AI. The qin music is my own performance, played on my Er Long Xi Zhu qin, whose name means “Two Dragons Playing with a Pearl.”
The moon in the video is imagined. The moon in the photograph above is the one I saw tonight. I do not want the images in the video to pretend I performed beneath a moonlit sky: they are a space I made for the music. Then the real sky offered its own ending.
Liang Xiao Yin was not written for this Mid-Autumn Festival. Nor does a fine evening need to begin beautifully. Ours began with wind and rain, with people trying to get home. The clear sky came later.
When a qin string sounds, its note begins to fade. We cannot hold it in place. We can only listen while it is here. The same is true of this brief clearing after the storm. I wanted to share the performance, and this photograph, while the evening was still ours.
Su Shi wrote: “May we both live long; though a thousand miles apart, may we share the moon’s beauty.” The hope in those words does not promise that every Mid-Autumn night will be clear, or that everyone we miss will be beside us. It sends a wish to someone far away.
At five, I thought we might not see the moon at all. By seven, there it was. I went to my front door and looked up.
If you can see it from where you are tonight, we are looking at it together.
Watch the YouTube playlist. The individual Liang Xiao Yin video link has not yet been confirmed.
Video note: The moonlit visuals in the video were created with AI; the photograph above was taken outside my home tonight. The qin performance is my own, played on the Er Long Xi Zhu qin.
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