A dynamic narrative that also opens up time and space to reflect. I hear opportunities for affirmation and learning, or said another way, Nightingale presents a self to the listener who is both fully and wondrously themselves while also voicing aloud uncertainties about the time and space in which they find themselves tasked to discover the content and meaning of what they are inventorying. The vocals stir the listener to WANT to listen to beautiful lone voices and also harmonies. The care-ful instrumental choices do more than accompany. Composing of narrative and music/lyrics is brilliant. Can’t wait for the next episode to engage more with all of the above. Thank you to one and all in this cast of creators and makers!!! This review responds to episode 3-“Light.” The tension between NG and new songbird Rook intrigues because it is both realistic and over the top. What this manner of creating this tension allows us empathy for both, distrust of the new bird and exasperation with the old bird. And consider how that brings us to the universal! We so often do not trust the new but we at the same time feel exasperation with the old—can’t we at least try another way?? The episode also rivets us by other dialectics if noise and silence, fast and slow time tempos and of course light and dark and life and death. The song “Light” punctuates this episode! I simply didn’t want its energy to end in part because when it entered the narrative, it released all that tension. I am getting a wonderful growing image of Nightingale through cool details. The hoodie is brilliant! Next Friday cannot come soon enough. This review responds to episode 4: underneath. I find this chapter of the story asking me to consider a lot, including how the underground’s darkness is both sanctuary stimulating the need for new sources and types of light AND confusion as that those driven here feel swallowed and exhausted by the need to always dig deeper. For each experience of self-expression (including the glorious harmonies of songbird voices we so enjoy in this episode), we also sense how vulnerable these songs are, interrupted by new urgencies to continue the work of recording the stories of truth in order not to let them be swallowed up by whatever is threatening the lives of these songbirds. I also appreciate as a listener that I am invited underneath to learn more beginnings of these lives that are dynamic as in continuing, as in living. Songbirds, sing on! For episode 5 “between them” - how satisfying to return to tension betw Nightingale and Rook. The space between the known and unknown- the past and present - future? As itself a real and dynamic space is where, I believe, most of us experience and live. But it takes courage to recognize that we are alive here, alive in the in between. The threshold. And to this narrative’s point, yes! Seeking the lightness in the dark or the darkness in the light demands faith. Demands intentional leaving in order to come in again. How do we hold on and let go in single act of breathing? You give us so much enlightenment within mystery. You keep us actively engaged in your investment in moving within and through the threshold. And again the music as composition and performance is such uplifting way to begin the day even as we ponder that deep narrative. Again- thank you! For episode 6 (sure hoping Season 2 is coming even if we are to discover there is no ending but instead eternal “becomings”). So I sense a bit of a riff in Plato’s Cave- turning off the light cast or directed by others to be OK or trusting of the dark out of which to really see. This is equally thought-demanding and affirming as this entire series has been. What I perhaps most appreciate about this final episode is that I now understand more why songbirds. Songbirds live in trees or on the branches of trees AND they sing to each other so that listening must be a part of seeing- of perceiving. Humans might not understand the language of their songs but if they learn how to listen to the unfamiliar they might awaken from a deadened place to a more true and life-giving and receiving dynamic - to see and hear the world as “might be.” I want to think more about “growing beyond” in relation to “growing from inside” as defining tree life. Perhaps if the tree is a “map of memory,” the tree maps the action of remembering which is an action bridging past (roots) and present? We need the dark space wherein roots grow but we need to also follow our own root (system?) through the hollows of the trunk to the branch of this same root. Are trees hollow? And the tree as space of home/self that is also so very much an elaborate extension of that self into other selves-our own? Others’ selves? The curious questioning, the storytelling, the enlightening continuing!!! This creation has been my Friday morning, my rooting and my high throughout September- its transporting music, narrative, performers, all creators and very visible sense of care-full collaboration is a gift. I will be re-listening intentionally in the night as well as the light!👋💓so there wasn’t an ending but a beginning which is one way of reading the gift to us if episode 7 which like this review’s focus us very meta🤗 Mist powerful to me is memory is the narrative which is the way we choose to begin- how affirming of one’s life as dynamic/moving! Also I am not a lance you understand or don’t understand but I am in between. And return to the sky, the water and the land as we plant our memories as seedlings of another call by memory which is to gather faith which is also ongoing process v something to have which suggests it merely comes to us as a thing to own/take for granted. Nope- The Doctor Is Dead shows us that just as our narratives must be eternally sought so must our faith in them be part of our seeking as we forever are becoming our memories and their meanings! What I am inspired to seek now is what I need to understand about leaving as necessary to becoming!
