Memory of Water - final faerie lights in the forest
The 5th & Final installation of the North Forest Lights
Previously: What is the North Forest Lights?
A 5 piece outdoor winter extravaganza of LED lights, music & nature at Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art in Bentonville, AR, created by Moment Factory.1 It is my favorite art exhibit EVER.
Crystal Grove - the 1st installation
Forest Frequencies - the 2nd installation
Whispering Tree - the 3rd installation
The Hearth - the 4th installation
The final installation takes place upon a bridge. There is no water underneath. Instead, we cross over a rocky ravine at the bottom of a wooded valley. The path leading to it winds through the dark. As we approach, tiny dots of blue light cover the tree trunks like glowworms. They wriggle and flicker; they wink and blink to the tune of raindrop chimes.
Often, it’s necessary to wait for the crowd to disperse at the end of each show before we can make our way onto the bridge. There is a longer time between iterations because of that, with a lovely intro of guitar music. Except for the bridge lighting, only a few faint bulbs glow here and there, reminiscent of those first lonely lights that lit up random trees on the long walk into the North Forest. Here the standout trees are bathed in a sea-deep violet-blue.
We lean on the railings of the bridge and gaze down into the ravine, waiting. We can hear it as it comes. The music suddenly builds and then—
WHOOSH!
All the Blue Faeries have gallivanted across the park from their home in the Crystal Grove to play with us one last time. They sweep down the hillside where they explode into a gazillion stars. On both sides of the bridge, bursts of sapphire shoot up from the ravine, tracing geometrical shapes in the air that you can reach out and touch—or are they touching you? If you position yourself just so, the lasers shine fireworks into your face, and it suddenly becomes clear what was making all those glowworms on the trees—the farthest pinpoints of the starbursts.
From every direction you can hear it chasing and shifting: somewhere out there, ethereal droplets trickle into some unseen pool. Then the lights wink out from the top of the ravine to the bottom. Darkness reigns for a suspended breath. With one musical "tah-daaah," a virtuoso beam from upstream shines down the ravine and cuts under the bridge.
The light flattens, rolls like waves, and ripples outward toward the hillsides. On the back side beyond the bridge, the edges of the light draw literal wave patterns with a thick, neon blue marker. On the front, it is an undulating blue-and-purple river, a holographic sheet being slowly wafted side-to-side or in-and-out by languid art-gods.
For a moment, burnished sunset strikes the water. Clouds roll across the surface to cool it, while down on the rocky bed, fire crackles and burns through paper. The Blue Faeries pop to their feet, lighting up the hillside in applause.
I understand their reaction. I could stand on that bridge and stare into this river of light for hours. Alas, I don’t have hours left. The close of the exhibit is drawing near. Soon it will close forever, so I stand there through multiple passes, letting it all wash over me. Such wondrous sights and sounds sweep away any tension that could have remained within me after these three-and-a-half hours of Elements & Art Therapy.2
First, I view this piece from the far end of the bridge next to the speaker where I had captured the audio without the murmur of voices. In general, people are pretty silent during this spectacle. It tends to leave us awestruck and reverent. From such a stark side angle, the wave pattern is less obvious. Instead, I’m treated to the piercing way that the beam slices through the night and dives under the bridge. I also get a perfect view of the Wild Blue Faery Hunt sweeping down the hill.
Next, I watch from the back side, fascinated most of all by the starbursts down in the ravine. Over here, they don’t get outdone by the river.
Then I watch from the front-center of the bridge, and then once more. Only five of us are left. One of the girls has glow-finger gloves and she adds her finger dance to the starbursts. An older couple cuddles on the back side of the bridge. We smile and leave them to it, although we are all here together.
We are five more lights in the North Forest, each of us a beam, a luminescent bauble, a glowworm, or a zooming light bar. Each of us dances our solo while dancing in tandem, often unable to fully comprehend our place inside the greater choreography.
Alas. Pumpkin Hour approaches too quickly. I don’t want to say farewell. My hands grip the railing of the bridge for one last moment. I let the nearest sapphire starburst shoot me in the eye, and then sigh in rapture. Again, I am astounded that, for all the whirling, pulsing, chasing, swirling patterns of these lights, I have never once come close to experiencing that itch at the back of my skull—the warning that if I don’t stop what I’m doing I will risk a seizure.
That has remained inexplicable to me from the first time I visited to this last trip. Although I had that burst of healing from photosensitivity after the 2019 retreat in Spain, brain issues have slowly crept back in every time I get hammered with long stints of being forced to do neurological tasks I was medically removed from decades ago.
I’ve started having trouble with leaves flickering through the foliage again, and strobe effects onscreen or around me have become uncomfortable once more. Yet even as I write this post in the midst of the worst neuro-season I’ve experienced since acquiring three new brain traumas from 2012-14, watching these videos don’t bother me.
Of course, this light show isn’t a strobe extravaganza. Rather than producing harmful brain stress, I can feel it every time.
It’s healing.
One of my friends had a car wreck a few years back. Apparently there are all sorts of new therapies and techniques that car insurance companies automatically send people to when they have brain trauma now. I hear some of these involve light.
Spock eyebrow: Fascinating…
I can’t help but envy everybody having their brain injuries now, rather than back when I had mine. I suppose people who had theirs in the early 90s and before are envious of the minuscule treatment I received. I bet they would’ve loved the knowledge I was able to research in other people’s blogs about why I felt like I was going crazy, and what could possibly be done about it. Such is the nature of progress. I am thrilled for everybody receiving way better care than I did, but I admit it. I’m jealous, too.
Who would I be if I’d gotten to have those cutting edge therapies back in 2000?
Tell ya what. I probably wouldn’t be standing on a bridge in Arkansas—Arkansas?! Yes. Beautiful Arkansas—getting shot in the eyeball by a glorious blue starburst with glowworms and faeries all around me so…
So I let these light-water waves wash away the last iotas of my stress. Although I have come here on the 21st anniversary of my big car wreck, the memories do not haunt me tonight. They exist. They’re all back there in the dusty file folders of my mind. They always will be.
But here on this bridge, they don’t distress me.
It’s time to head home. My bottom lip is huge.
Earlier, when I returned for the second time from The Hearth to this Water installation, the Crystal Grove had gone silent and dark on the other side of the forest. Now the Forest Frequencies no longer zip and boom through the trees off the back side of the bridge, so I release my hold on the railing, give it one farewell caress, and start off toward the exit.
The adieu sign asks me which one was my favorite installation, and all I can do is laugh. The Sagittarius can't pick just one. My favorite is whichever one I'm enjoying at the moment. Or else it's YesToAll.
I barely pass anyone on the way out, and there is no exit music tonight. No lone lightbulbs showcasing a tree either. I have officially closed the joint down, which was my intention. I didn’t have to look at the clock to know. The Forest told me the hour.
By the time I reach the parking lot, there isn’t even anyone at the gate to bid me goodbye. Only three other vehicles besides mine dapple the hazy parking lot. The streetlights seem harsh and garish now, but at least the Buckster bids me farewell in LED style.
Once bundled into my car, I plug in my dead phone and head home through the Christmas-lit neighborhoods in silence. Yet the hush is full of cello chords and tinkling percussion, chimes and harps and drums. Those North Forest tunes stay with me for the rest of the night, through my dreams, and on into morning. They are destined to linger all week.
On the highway, headlights flash into my rear-view mirror and my heart races for a second, so I pet down my internal warning hackles that remind me how close to December 21 it still is—
“And you know what happens on December 21 when you drive at night!”3
Yes. I know. But this night?
Nothing but bliss.
© 2021 Hartebeast
Up Next: NERD ALERT! - Faerie Light Tech
While moping around after the closure of this exhibit, I return to the North Forest by sunset. There I am treated to the naked, raw sights of all the wondrous tech that created this extravaganza of light, sound, and nature.
Jonesin’ to start at the beginning now and see them all?
What is Crystal Bridges? My home away from home.
Moment Factory - creators of the North Forest Lights
If you haven’t been over on Bella & the Beast lately, you may not know that December is Anniversary Season for me. Ever since the days of my Olde Blog, the jing-jing-jingaling season is when I am inevitably inspired to write copious posts about car wrecks, bodily injury, traumatic brain injury, and the thing that started it all for me: being hit by a drunk driver.
This month I’ll be trying to catch my Substack up to where we were in those tales on the blog. Then Ye Olde Readers can finally learn what the heck happened after Holiday Hell, the first two weeks after my car wreck when the world shut down around me, just as I needed the most help. That whole adventure starts here:
