The moon as a muse - Debussy's Clair de Lune.

Many things in life and in the world inspire me; some elements are more marked than others, but the muse of many artists, and mine, has been the moon for as long as I can remember. I have written poems based on her that are too embarrassing to show openly, but the fact is that she gives me a sense of serenity and devotion so deep that I could admire her for hours (and I have). Muses always inspire us to look for them everywhere, as when the object of pleasure surpasses our thresholds and becomes an addiction.

Of course, I do not suffer from some disease in which, if I find myself deprived of the moon, I will burst or something like that, but at night I like to look for it, and during the day I am secretly thrilled to be able to see its distant face in the blue sky. The moon, protagonist of so many novels, paintings and poems, could not escape the sensitive ears that have immortalized their admiration for it in musical compositions. Thus we have "Clair de Lune" by Claude Debussy.

Almost every time (not to say always) that I am doing some task that demands my concentration, or I am reading for pleasure, or I want to sleep and I can't fall asleep, and so many other cases, the sweet and enveloping notes of Debussy wrap my brain in a mystical, light and absorbing veil, where I can listen to the hot music but also move to a stage outside my reality. I know that the moon has more works of which it has been a source of inspiration, whether composed or written directly for it or as a symbol representing femininity, like Beethoven's Moonlight.

And that is what the moon also represents: femininity, or at least it is something I have noticed (and more expert people have better bases to say something about it) and that we can see in how it is represented in mythologies, like the goddess Selene of the famous Greek myths. Something I love about the moonlight that eventually accompanies my sleepless nights, is that Debussy was inspired by a poem of the same name by Paul Verlaine to compose this piece where the main voice comes from the piano. The piano seems to me to be such an elegant and energetic instrument when it wants to be, because to say that it only evokes nostalgia is to deny that it can produce fast-paced and voluminous pieces like Korsakov's "Flight of the Bumblebee".

Even so, it is in its parsimonious, delicate and soft version where I feel most moved. Debussy's piece is so sublime without trying to be ostentatious that it overwhelms you with a feeling so deep that it makes you want to cry, or at least that has been my case. Music, like an actress, has the power to transmit such real feelings and awaken them in you without asking for permission, but with Clair de Lune I don't feel invaded, on the contrary, I feel as if something is asking for permission to feel.

Paul Verlaine described in his poem "With the still moonlight, sad and beautiful..." a silent, beautiful and melancholic companion, witness of troubadours, lovers, compassionate and wretched souls. If some artists finds themselves without a source of inspiration, I would definitely recommend they to let themselves be enveloped by the feminine and maternal aura of the moon, a borrowed light because it is a mere reflection of the sun, but which does not detract from the brilliance of this silent observer suspended in the sky, even if you do not see her all the time. Debussy will always be my calling card (and my sleep cure) of this muse, who makes me wonder:

Is it so poignantly beautiful that it makes you sad? Or is it so melancholy and sad that that's what makes it devastatingly beautiful? Maybe these questions don't make sense, but what can I say? The beauty of the moon stuns me.