With the opening shot of Mute Voices, a short film by Catherine Gropper, I was in a state of envious awe for the star:  an isolated white Swan, a seeming silent solo within the ensemble of blue twilight accompanied only by the freedom to be.

Next on-screen, text of a no-brainer, briefly confirming my appreciative reverence for the solitude of nature allowing us to live among it – should we choose to be partnered with it – as an interspecies ballet perhaps.

What came next, however, was as mute as a shock and awe sneak attack by superior forces insisting on their right to give, then, when inconvenient to human convenience, take away the liberty to bond only to one other for life.

I was not prepared for the frigid water of knowledge drowning out my fantasy of sharing space with all life on earth.  I needed someone to explain what I was seeing, for my mind simply could not fathom the destruction of my, all is well with the nature of things.

Then a familiar face:  actor and advocate for our environment enhancing our enchantment with all the arts found therein, Jane Alexander spoke.  Clipping my wings to escape reality hiding in plain sight, she exposed the invading truth on the eastern tip of Long Island New York.

Catherine Gropper’s film unmutes our awareness of the world we take for granted as our forever resource without paying attention to what price we must pay one day:  leaving those who follow, to suffer in our wake.

For all of the soulful beauty of Mute Voices, its gut-wrenching truth is:  we humans are the parents of earth and all life upon it.  Thus, every moment we ignore nature’s disappearances, the more we allow our all alone, aloneness.

Humans will not survive our cancelling the emotional, physical and psychological sustenance that is the very essence of our existence, if we continue to prioritize expedience, embrace foul vision and set adrift, on a fowl-less lake.  

If we remain unaware of what organizations and government agencies like, The New York State Department of Environmental Conservation (DEC) are doing, we may one day be IDed as an invasive species.  After all, animals and birds are not destroying the very habitat upon which we, human animals, depend.

If we’ve forgotten what we owe our children’s children for their life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness, please allow the elevation of Vincent Gagliostro’s editing, the worthiness of Jane Alexander’s wisdom and the conscious curative cinematography of creators Catherine Gropper, Matthew Wagenknecht and Owen Dovan, to broaden our vision of community and unity.