Original Song and Illustration: I dream of Auroras, Northern Lights

Click play button to listen to my "Northern Lights" song while you read the article.

So as I mentioned in introduction post besides being a musician I am illustrator and visual artist. So this post is a cross-over of my music linked to my art.

Dreaming of Northern Lights

For as long as I remember I have dreamed of Northern Lights. I feel overwhelmed as they blueish and green hues dance mysteriously and eerily in a cold starry sky but I've never seen with my own eyes.

This is a dream I would like to make a reality, I hope one day, in this life, to travel North and gaze this spectacular Nature phenomena when solar wind charged particles hit the Earth's atmosphere molecules. Earth's magnetic field lines funnel these particles over the planet's poles creating the Aurora Borealis in the North and Australis in the South. They must be such an amazing sight. I do not know how I would react, or if I might feel the same way I've experienced while watching them in dreams... but It's something I must find out one day.

But I know I'll do, maybe even film footage to make a video for this song you are listening to. But meanwhile the ghostly glow of my imagined "auroras" have inspired melodies and drawings. Here you can read the lyrics (poem) I wrote for "Northern Lights", listen to it and see the artwork I created to go along with it.

Northern Lights: The Poem and the Song

I'm wandering alone
In the silent snow
Heading back to the North
Where old things untold
Icy and cold
Melt and go
In a sunless dawn
Black canvas now covered
With colourful strokes
Painting the Heaven's Vault
Oh Northern light!
Cleave this deathless night
Lingering above embroidering the sky
Oh Northern light!
Weave the wispy haze
To behold that eerie beauty in a daze
Painting the Heaven's Vault
Oh Northern Light!
Cleave this deathless night
Lingering above
Embroidering the sky

Northern Lights is a song that was featured in my second music illustrated album The Underliving (2011).

The flute sound you listen to is an Low Whistle tuned in D (an octave lower than the traditional Irish tin whistle), probably my favourite flute to play. I wrote an article about on my website about music instruments. . The main motif was born originally improvising with this instrument and thus the final song remained in its key signature where it remained as one of the "lead instruments". Then I composed a second melody as a counterpoint that is performed by the cello, performed in this recording by my friend Svetlana Tovstukha.

Drawing the artworks for the song

In this case the ideas on the the first doodles where the same ones than in the drawing that was finally published. I wanted to portray an arctic wolf, though I confess in my mind it looked very much like my beloved dog Kira, my Siberian Husky that died many years ago. In my dreams I saw her shape looming out the wispy greens and blues like a sleeping spirit. Like a spirit animal sleeping in the Heaven's Vault. So I made up a story about an arctic wolf that had traveled North to finally cuddle in the snow to die, and while gazing the dancing lights in awe, rising in spirit to join the luminous and ghostly lights.

The ideas were already there, a girl as "alter-ego" of the wolf, with yellowish eyes. She has white fur clothing because she is the wolf too. Just want to make clear that I am against the use of real fur in actual modern clothing :) but for the artistic sake of the illustration I wanted to make the girl look like a wolf in disguise. I'm wandering alone in the silent snow Both girl and wolf are the same spirit. I finally went for the second composition drafted on the side of this first raw sketch.

I polished a final sketch before starting to paint.

The wolf sleeping in the sky looks very much like my dog Kira as I say she was in my mind all the time. I chose a basic palette of turquoise and green and drafted a super quick matte painting to pick a palette of colours.

I decided to choose another position to show the closed eyes clearer. The final result was this

So some details of the final result and panorama version joining both halves of the illustration

The final printed version included some extensions of matte-painted Northern Lights textures and hand-drawn frames. It is always special when you see the actual drawing in real media. As the whole album was an illustrated project for me somehow it's important to have it as a solid physical printed product. I am currently working on another illustrated music project entitled "Fear no More". In many ways my dream of being able to release the new project made me found Steemit.

So I made a song about Northern Lights but How do Northern Lights sound?

For centuries there have been reports of eerie and clapping, hisses and pops if listened in total stillness in especially powerful auroras. This idea somehow haunts me. It is true that they emit radio waves but the frequencies are too low for us to hear and they are also produced too far away to reach the ground and been heard. Or thus we have been told. The idea of the Northern Lights producing audible noise has been debated a long time and told to be only "mere folk tales", rumours and fantasies. But recent studies confirmed that the distant clapping and faint sputter that has been told to be heard on occasions are actually generated in the open sky and first time properly recorded by scientist Unto K. Laine from Aalto University who devoted more than 15 years to record the auroras and finally providing clear evidence of claps in 2011 and has since postulated several theories about how geomagnetic disturbances taking place during strong aurora outbursts can cause the electricity to discharge and generate different sounds.

One of the first times I performed my song Northern Lights live was in Faerieworlds Festival, back in 2008. Some listeners had come all the way down from Alaska and they told me after the concert they had cried and that was the way "Auroras" sounded for them in their mind when watching them. I live in Spain and I have never actually seen them so that was one of the most thrilling compliments I have ever received as a composer and performer. I will never forget that moment.

I perform often on @dlive so if you happen to catch one of my streams feel free to request this one as I've done performed it several times there already.

Above, Northern Lights performed live in Teatre Ponent, Barcelona (2013)

One day I'll see the Northern Lights

Because there are some dreams that are meant to be fulfilled. I don't know how or when I'll be able to but my spirit knows of them and will have this wish granted.
I want to film this "ghosts in the sky" and compose more music inspired by it. I love to compose music while being inspired by Nature. Sometimes I carry my flutes or lap harp with me like a minstrel. I would like just to be there, to listen and feel the magic of it all, and maybe hum, or play to them.
Meanwhile I enjoy seeing them through the eyes of others. So if you happen to have pictures of Northern Lights or experiences about them that want to share feel free to do so.

Above: Textures I paint of my imaginary Northern Lights...

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All music content and images included in this post are © to Priscilla Hernandez

Priscilla Hernandez
singer-songwriter & illustrator
http://yidneth.com