A change in the weather - in surround sound

For those who don’t live in Melbourne, we have been having a rather warm week.  Hot days, hot airless nights, grumpy children, grumpy naked children, grumpy not-asleep children and grumpy parents.  As mentioned in an earlier post, I find it hard to work in the heat and we have so far done without air-con.  I’ve been knuckling down today with an upright fan, lots of water to drink and minimal clothing… trying to keep the work going and not doing too badly.  Having done a morning’s worth of work I sat on the back step of our house and spent some time listening to the unfolding drama of the weather; lots of rumbling in the distance, panning from one side of the northern sky to the other. It was lovely to just sit and listen to the whole thing in amazing surround sound; low thudderings taking shape, moving and changing as they shift from west to east or east to west.  The gradual picking up of the wind as the change starts to come through, the leaves registering the moving air and then the birds getting excited at the prospect of a break from the heat and some waited for rain.  I could have sat out there for much longer, just listening and being in the midst of it all and experiencing the shear scope and scale of the sound and its aliveness and character and transformation through time.   But the desk calls, the piece needs me to write it while the ideas are there and the cool change is on its way.