It’s towards the end of September! You know what that means… Halloween! That means tis the season for my obsession with the Danse Macabre Camille Saint-Saens 1980s cartoon that PBS aired then was subsequently shown in my elementary school’s music class and those little Pillsbury cookies with pumpkins on them. Skeletons am I right! I like to think I have a personal connection with Halloween because my new apartment is directly next to a graveyard and because my grandmother was a witch!
I know what you’re thinking… “Wow, Izzy, you sound mildly unhinged for 8:48 pm.”
Yes, I am!
I haven’t slept in two days, but if you think that will stop me from talking about the unmistakable groove of skeletons getting down to some funky violin under the moonlight and the best sugar cookies ever… you would be unfortunately mistaken!
The beautifully delicate flutes flutter into the makings of a dance in celebration of life juxtaposed against the decaying corpses of the dancers, swaying in shredded garments that have been decomposing with their models in the passing of time. This childlike trot becomes amplified by the frantic crescendo of the violins signifying the need to finish the commemoration before sunrise which is when they must return to their graves. A melancholy cacophony calls out the assortment of bones while they rise into the sky in flight as a swarm of ribs and femurs do ballet into the fog, only to cascade back down by the soft lull of violin bow being pulled across the strings. A reminder that despite their fervent jubilee the dead must stay dead or life has no meany. Sunrise’s faint pinks and yellows of tomorrow slipping into today set these lovely souls back to sleep for another year, and we are left with grass and stone once more.
This display of these “lovely bones” calling out to heaven just to flaunt hell is an incredible composition piece that will remain cemented in Holloween’s history as indisputably gas.
…and who doesn’t love little sugar cookies!