The movie Weeping Camel affected me so much. In it, the vibrating strings of a Mongolian musical instrument placed on a camel’s back caused such calm that she came to love her own child.

In Mongolia, the environment is so quiet that you can hear blades of grass vibrating as the wind whistles over flat expanses. Using the steppes as a backdrop, 18 students from Yale-NUS Singapore went to Mongolia – we made aeolian kites – 1-string guitars that float in the sky. The students were responsible to find innovative ways to anchor 1 end of the kite, and the wind did the rest. At times, it sounded like Mongolian overtone singing.

This was a course where the harmony of the spheres really was explored. Nature was the performer.

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