A total solar eclipse in rural Indiana became an impromptu festival of cosmic proportions, complete with “Dark Side of the Moon” and firewood philosophy
The Open Field lived up to its name on eclipse day—a sprawling canvas of grass and sky where roughly a hundred people gathered to watch the moon slide across the sun. But this wasn’t just celestial spectatorship. This was a carefully orchestrated sonic experience, one that treated the eclipse less like a scientific phenomenon and more like the universe’s own headlining set.
The vision was audacious in its simplicity: sync Pink Floyd’s “The Dark Side of the Moon” to totality. It’s the kind of idea that sounds perfect over beers but rarely survives contact with reality—timing celestial mechanics to a 1973 prog-rock masterpiece. Yet as the sky darkened and “Brain Damage” gave way to “Eclipse,” the gamble paid off. The moment felt less like coincidence and more like cosmic choreography.
When totality hit, the playlist pivoted to David Bowie’s “Starman,” that glittering anthem of otherworldly yearning. The transition was seamless, the mood transcendent. What followed—Bonnie Tyler’s power-ballad bombast and Nick Drake’s melancholic “Pink Moon”—traced an emotional arc from euphoria to introspection. The crowd, according to post-event feedback, approved.
The setlist also drew from the Community Foundation of Grant County’s Space playlist (available on Spotify @GiveToGrant), including Jerry Garcia’s languid “Dear Prudence” and other suitably interstellar selections. But the curatorial masterstroke came with the inclusion of tracks from the Golden Record, that analog time capsule launched aboard Voyager 1 and 2 in 1977.
Carl Sagan, who spearheaded the Golden Record project at Cornell, once called it “a bottle into the cosmic ocean” that said “something very hopeful about life on this planet.” The record contains 115 images, natural sounds, and musical selections spanning cultures and centuries—all encoded in analog and sheathed in protective aluminum, a message from Earth to anyone (or anything) listening. Playing those tracks beneath an eclipsed sun felt appropriate, even poignant: a reminder that we’ve been trying to communicate with the cosmos for decades, and music has always been part of the vocabulary.
Local indie rock outfit Stay Outside added live energy to the proceedings, their presence transforming the gathering from listening party into genuine community event. Organizers supplied firewood and snacks for those inclined toward late-night existential conversation, though the tyranny of weekday work schedules thinned the crowd as darkness fell.
Still, what lingered wasn’t the logistical challenges or early departures. It was the sense of shared wonder—strangers united under the same temporarily darkened sky, connected by the universal language of music and the simple fact of looking up together.
As Sagan understood, and as this eclipse gathering proved, we’re all under the same sky. Some of us just happen to be listening to the same tunes while we contemplate it.
The Total Solar Eclipse at The Open Field playlist is available on Spotify, curated by DJ RoLo.