Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits, and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d tow’rs, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve,
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on; and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep.
(from The Tempest by William Shakespeare)
To be invited to use air as inspiration is a little like being invited to take a picture of something that is invisible: there is a chance of capturing everything and nothing, perhaps simultaneously. In the lines above, from the last play that Shakespeare wrote alone, arguably the greatest writer in history shows us air as both absence and presence, and it is this unavoidable tension – evidenced in every aspect of our lives – between that which we can see and that which lies beneath the surface that may be the source of your inspiration as you pick up the pen (or laptop!) or brush, to almost literally create something out of nothing. We are surrounded by air in every moment of our waking lives and we not only inhabit it, it inhabits us. Of what else can we say the same? The people in our lives –our family, friends and lovers- who live in our hearts and minds even long after they have shuffled off this mortal coil or just stepped out to grab us a coffee on a lazy Sunday morning. The ideas that never stop multiplying inside our heads and give shape to the world through every thought and action. The books we read. The songs we listen to. The looks that pass between intimate strangers. These are all the air. So whether your inspiration comes through the thin air of Everest, Bach’s “Air on the G String”, the Nike Airs on the feet of your favorite athlete, the impossible blue of the last moments of a summer afternoon, or air that only you could ever imagine, I encourage you to take this opportunity to create something that will at once be uniquely yours and breathed in by all of us.
