Cedrick Eymenier

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Damsels Without Stress

A film by Cédrick Eymenier
Music by David Coulter, played & recorded by
Julia Kent, Simon Fisher Turner, and David Coulter
(The music is available on Coriolis Sounds, cs32.)

Damselflies, or Calopterygidae — from the Greek kalos (beautiful) and ptery (winged) — are flying insects from the order, Odonata, meaning tooth-jawed. They are an aggressive predatory species that include the larger dragonflies, which have stouter bodies than damselflies, suggesting the tougher “dragons” are a male archetype versus the more delicate female demoiselles, which is the French word for damselflies.* These water-striding insects have been described by many cultures as elegant as swans and as delicate as butterflies.

A damselfly’s large eyes are set apart (unlike a dragonfly’s compound eyes that meet in the middle), and they fold their wings together at rest (again, unlike a dragonfly). Adult damselflies have a wingspan of 50 to 80mm, and like dragonflies need to be near water to complete their lifecycle, which can last up to a year.

Most of a damselfly’s life is spent as larva. They emerge as (juvenile) nymphs shortly before molting into adults, which happens between May and August. They live up to two weeks while mating.

The brighter colored males establish a mating territory to seek females. They will clasp a female’s head who opens her abdomen to receive the male’s sperm. If another aggressive male intruder intercedes, the intruder will replace the former’s sperm with its own and will guard the area where the female deposits her eggs.

The “electric” or cerulean blue damselflies in Damsels Without Stress are common in Europe. The film was shot along the Ruisseau du Lingas (the Lingas Stream) in the Forêt du Lingas, near Mont Aigoual, in the Cévennes National Park, which is part of the Massif Central. From the mountain’s southern slopes the Le Garonne River flows eastward into the Atlantic, of which the Lingas is one of many tributaries. The presence of these primordial insects in such a crystal clear stream is an indication of the health of the region’s aquatic ecosystem.

This is their story but also ours, which began about 11,700 years ago at the end of the last Ice Age when the Holocene began and nomads turned to farming and herding, and settlers began to treat nature as a subset of human ambition, for which the Holocene has since shifted to become the Anthropocene.

Damsels Without Stress was accompanied by musician/composer David Coulter’s shifting modal harmonies. Coulter was joined by cellist Julia Kent’s slow, weaving melodies and actor/musician/composer Simon Fisher Turner’s synthetic incantations. Together they conjure a hypersonic primordial soundscape of insects in flight but with the atmospheric elasticity of Pythagoras “music of the spheres.”

—Jeff Rian
Paris, May 1, 2025

*Damsel plus? fly, derive from Vulgar Latin domnicella, a youngl lady or maiden, thus the French name demoiselle for damselflies. The French word for dragonfly, libellule, comes from the Latin libella, meaning booklet, which resembles a dragonfly’s spread wings when it lands.