Burning lapis on a black hook

Berlioz On The Moon

On the first night, he had a dream. They were driving
the lunar rover and they came across tracks left by another
vehicle. They radioed Houston to ask permission to follow
them and were granted. So, they traced them awhile as
stars moved horizontally overhead and a blue globe hung
in the far distance like burning lapis on a black hook.

After some time the tracks led to a rover remarkably
like their own and there were two people in it. They
had been there for thousands of years, inhabitants
teeming with questions, proprietors of their own alien
culture. It is fitting that a man would have this dream
in the first sleep cycle on the empty grey lunar surface.



In essence, we have been there for thousands of years,
millions, if you count our elemental make-up. And he
brought Berlioz with him, a Symphonie Fantastique
that spoke Moon to the austere beauty they held together
in a place without sky, synchronously locked to a blue
sphere just within reach in the near absence before them.

So the day broke and out they went. One of them, in his
exuberance, ran and jumped and fell on the moon while
four cameras filmed it. Sound cannot travel in a vacuum.
How then music? You may well ask: Is there anything
in the world sadder than a train standing in the rain?
I would offer: A bowed cello on the moon.

Joseph Gallo
March 3, 2008