The weather here is absolute crap. Everyone is paying attention, and rightly so, to the hurricane moving ashore in the Gulf of Mexico. Yet here on the northeastern prairie, it started raining yesterday and will continue through tomorrow night, an unending, dismal haze of rain, the threat of flooding (the Rock River already flooded nearby Machesney Park and South Beloit in late-spring/early-summer and those areas have yet to recover fully), and a general feeling of "Blech". While not technically autumn, these kinds of fall rains are not only energy-draining, they are emotionally taxing, at least for me.
They also put me in mind of England, don't ask me why. For some reason the music of some English bands just seem to go well with dreary weather. Pink Floyd, especially Dark Side of the Moon and Animals just pick me up from wherever I'm at and put me in Perfidious Albion, where Jerusalem will be built among their dark Satanic mills (in the words of William Blake). Another, more recent, band that is so quintessentially English is Porcupine Tree. I mentioned them earlier in the summer, and I have been enjoying getting to know. Yet, in many ways the seasons have brought their music in to its own. What follows is long indeed, and I realize these music posts are rarely paid attention to, but I ask for your indulgence and patience. "The Sky Moves Sideways" was an attempt at a single piece of music, at close to fifty minutes in length. It failed to reach that extreme of self-indulgence, but at thirty-four minutes it does pretty well. The following four pieces together capture not just the music, but with the accompanying photograph, the mood of the piece as well.
