The thing about standing on a hill in the dark waiting for the sun is that you’re participating in the oldest ritual humans have, the one where we gather to witness something larger than ourselves and somehow make it mean more by being there together.
So we’re up here in the Marin Headlands with the bridge suspended below like proof that impossible things happen daily, and San Francisco glows across the water like a constellation that decided to get closer. The wind’s coming off the Pacific with that particular Northern California clarity that wakes you up from the inside out, reminding me that I’m alive enough to feel cold, alive enough to feel anything.
My body’s doing that electric thing where exhaustion and exhilaration occupy the same space, and I’m running through whatever preparations keep me tethered. But really I’m just opening yourself up to what’s coming, that slow reveal when the sky starts its transformation and suddenly everything I’m about to do feels both insignificant and essential.
There’s something generous about performing at dawn, like we’re harmonizing with the world instead of demanding its attention. The landscape isn’t competition, it’s collaboration. The bridge holds its geometry against the changing light. The bay offers its reflection. We offer whatever it is we came to give.
That’s the real preparation: standing there, feeling connected, understanding that we’re part of something that’s been happening since before there were words for it. The morning’s already performing. We’re just adding our voice to the chorus, trusting that the combination, light, landscape, breath, presence, might add up to something worth losing sleep over.
Then the sky cracks open and we get to work.
Speculation on Slacker’s Hill, Marin Headlands: Muriel and Ryan “backstage” before the performance of the Euripides Fragment Love is the Fullest Education