7:39PM Lunar Eclipse

A La Luna Yo Me Voy

When there’s a total lunar eclipse, do you think the Earth wonders when the Moon will come back? Or if she’ll come back at all. As though the few minutes without the Moon are longer than all the other millennia the Earth’s been spinning. It only happens every few years. It’s not so terrible if Earth enters a deep panic… even for a little while. Those two see each other all the time anyway. What most people don’t know is that the Moon is up all day; it’s just not always visible to us. Neil deGrasse Tyson is off somewhere chuckling to himself about how silly we are. Not knowing the moon is up all day? Classic dimwit humans. The Sun is too bright during the day hours; it drowns out the Moon almost entirely. Those are the hours when it’s like Earth has a little secret with the Moon. It’s like an inside joke.

Surely Earth’s favorite time of day is watching the Moon’s standoff with the Sun as they trade posts, as though we are all wondering whose move is next. Earth always really loved that game. For a moment, they would pretend something different was going to happen, despite knowing the same result was just on the horizon.

Last night’s eclipse went on for too long. Whenever the Moon does disappear like that, Earth tries to assure herself at first, this is like every other time, the Moon will come back around. Then the fear starts to creep in. Maybe this is the one time it really happens. If the Moon never comes back, all the night animals will be lost in space, eternally searching for that futile guiding light.

Wasn’t it Rumi who once said, “the wound is the place where the Light enters you”? Earth remembered in that moment of absence… Perhaps the Moon was gone now the same way she vanishes to all the animals on Earth during the daytime hours. Earth tried out that mental trick in an effort to be released from the claws of panic. She was unable to see past the fear that this void might stop Earth from spinning. If the rotation did halt, would it be such a bad thing? Who’s to say Earth doesn’t want to just float in the middle of space rather than get hurled in great circles, spinning around the Moon each day, or… as the humans say, it’s the Moon that spins around Earth. An avalanche. A monsoon. A mudslide. Earth shrugged. She never really liked all that technical bogus.

By the time the Moon came back around, she strutted in like nothing happened. Laughing it off, the Moon asked the Earth how such a small thing could be such a big deal. It was only a few minutes. It’s not like any of the humans really noticed that type of thing anyway. The Moon will never understand how cold that night was without her extra bit of light, even if it was darker and redder than usual.

The musical project and album AfroCubism was officially recorded in 2010 and released that same year by World Circuit Records, featuring a collaboration between Cuban and Malian musicians. Although originally conceived in 1996 as the project that became Buena Vista Social Club, it was delayed for 14 years.