When it rains, I get lost in the music of the rain and transfixed by the optical magic of the drops.

There is also an exquisite sadness in watching the rain.

It is so beautiful and melancholy,

it makes me feel alone in the face of geological time and the cycles of nature that existed before life on earth.

 

Video

 

The sound of a heavy rain is three-dimensional, the sum of millions of individual droplets,

splashing to earth with surprising volume.

The music of a downpour is a velvety hiss that approaches white noise,

while in the foreground drops form and drip like heartbeats.

The fleeting inverted image of the landscape in the raindrops

as they swell from drop to drip is an optical phenomenon, but to me it’s pure magic.

And then they form streams and pulse hypnotically like luminous quicksilver.

 

I shot this film with a Beaulieu wind-up 16 mm. movie camera from the ’60s

and film stock that was at least ten years out of date.

The film was shot on a balcony with an awning while my wife napped in the next room with one of our boys.

They slept so deeply that even the thunder did not wake them.

The music and sound design by Shay Lynch ties the rain with a distant dreamlike melody.