Silver by The Moondig

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Mere hours after a full Moon rose in the constellation Sagittarius, The Moondig embarked on their latest lunar mission: the search for Silver, element 47 of the periodic table (known in alchemical circles as Luna), continuing their cosmic pilgrimage through the elements of Mendeleev’s table.

To mark this *Silver* mission, The Moondig set up treir launchpad in the Demerbeemden nature reserve in Betekom, Belgium, on a freshly scythed field beside the meandering Demer river. It became a kind of on-location field-recording studio. The small, select audience included the guys from Natuurpunt and a few invited guests.

The beer tap was opened a day early, as the following weekend the same site would host the *Big Jump*: a playful yet powerful event organised by Natuurpunt to raise public and political awareness about the need for clean, healthy rivers and ecosystems. The Big Jump features food and drinks, live music, information stands, guided walks — and the highlight of the day: a collective plunge into the river by a joyful crowd!

Silver - or argentum, Ag - has long been tied to lunar symbolism. It reflects, refracts, and reacts. In the language of the elements, silver is the master of transformation: blackening under sulphur, reddening with chromates, whispering in yellow iodides, flashing to white halides that fade with light. Its photochemical legacy shaped the birth of photography, etching shadows into glass plates with a whisper of the Sun. And its role in trading, electronics, medicine, mirrors and other utensils, made it a quiet backbone of modern civilisation and perhaps even future lunar colonies.

Silver has been confirmed on the Moon, though only in trace amounts, scattered across regolith in parts per billion. No veins of ore, no seams of shine, only whispers in dust. Yet its potential, especially in space applications, is profound: It is used in electronics, batteries, thermical coatings and telescopes. It is conductive, antibacterial, reflective, resilient. It enables life and light. It kills bacteria without them becoming resistant to it. It could store data in quantum coherence and could one day form the nervous system of self-repairing spacecraft or regulate photosynthetic rhythms in space-borne ecosystems.

As the notes unfold – with Tom Dwars once again conjuring rich, warm tones from his silver flute – the shimmer of Ag emerges as a symbol of deep human emotion, transposed into sound. And for a moment, we catch a glimpse of the true nature of existence. Silver, like memory, ages and tarnishes. It reflects while absorbing. It is a threshold between light and shadow, past and present, Earth and Moon.

The Moondig’s Silver is both a jubilee and a journey: a celebration of 47 albums within this lunar element series, and a continued exploration of music as elemental alchemy. It weaves sonic filaments like silver’s own conductive paths - across circuits, across species, across stars.
In a time when clean water and clean data are equally precious, when every photon must be harvested with care, and -if they don’t watch out- humanity’s future may depend on building symbiotic systems on distant worlds; even the faintest trace of silver on the Moon is a treasure that may glint with extended possibilities, and the loving memory of our rivers here on Earth, and the people who jump in together, for nature, for love, for life.


Tom B.

On its voyage
of discovery,
The Moondig intercepts
musical messages that interconnect
the various spaces
of the free mind.