Solar eclipses have been predictable to astronomers for millennia.
And yet, they feel decidedly strange to us as we experience them.
Predictable and strange is an interesting pairing – we tend to think of predictable events as boring, and strange experiences as unpredictable.
Yesterday I did a trust fall, and though I’ve done it with my choir every year for the last five, there is predictable and strange stretching of time in the second-and-a-half that you are falling.
You can study Beethoven’s Symphony #9 until it’s imprinted on your retinas, but chances are you’ll still be thrilled by that moment in the fourth movement, every time you hear it.
There are experiences that are predictable in our choral year: concert night stress, musical struggle, intra-choir strife, moments of beauty. Though predictable, they will still feel strange, frustrating, wonderful. And we wouldn’t really want it it otherwise.
If everything predictable felt boring, what a dull world it would be.
Enjoy the eclipse today, and look forward to those predictable moments of strangeness scattered through the future.