The Winds of Freedom
Listen to Balloons
Balloons
This piece began with a simple glissando — a musical slide that seemed to lift the sound upward without effort. It called to mind the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta, where enormous shapes rise at dawn, carried not by engines or wings but by warmed air and a willingness to drift. Balloonists do not steer so much as negotiate with invisible currents, rising or sinking to find a layer of wind that moves in a different direction. Freedom, here, looks less like control and more like cooperation.
From above, the city softens into patterns, and the illusion of mastery fades. There is no wheel in the basket, only attention — to altitude, to weather, to limits. The wind cannot be commanded, only engaged. This is a gentle kind of freedom: not the power to go anywhere at will, but the ability to move gracefully within realities we did not choose. It is the difference between fighting the current and learning how to float.
Eventually, every flight ends the same way — a search for open ground, a careful descent, a solid, welcome thump. No one lands alone; a ground crew arrives, the balloon is folded, and the field returns to ordinary pasture. What remains is not triumph but quiet gratitude. We rose because conditions allowed it, traveled by yielding without surrender, and returned to earth reminded that sometimes the deepest freedom is simply staying aloft for a while — and knowing when to come down.
