On a video tribute to
Carl Sagan and Stephen Hawking
Perhaps you know that geologists go to great lengths to find old rocks to analyze, to get a glimpse of the origins and early development of the earth. Anthropologists visit peoples isolated in remote jungles of Brazil, or the wilderness of southern Africa, to study what early human social life may have been like at the dawn of our history. Scholars seek out and study rare texts for the secrets of ancient wisdom, and an understanding of the origins of civilization. Some quests are scientific, some spiritual. Seemingly separate paths that mingle and intersect. All, as such, involve the pursuit of knowledge.
This video, strains of which I first heard playing on one of my sons' computers, is an amazing convergence of such threads - at once a product of the present and a flashback to our future and our past. A merging of science and technology, art and artifice. It combines elements of recent flourishes of technical creativity and brilliance in science with modern approaches to recording and remixing images and sounds into "songs".
Now, as this is a production found on YouTube, where much trash and non-sense abounds, purists may say this video is not art. But then, what is art?
Each may have their own answer to this question. Mine is this: Art is a creation, a perceivable expression of ideas formulated by a human spiritmind, in temporary or permanent forms, involving the conscious use by its creator/s of symbolic forms or gestures, and while it may be applied to ordinary purposes, it is generally created for purposes beyond the conduct of day-to-day human affairs or business. In other words, it may be viewed and appreciated by itself, and for what it is, in isolation and without attachment to other purposes. Art, as the creation of conscious beings, is distinct from naturally-occurring wonders, but just like any natural wonder, it may inspire a single person, or many, of those who pause to experience it.
In this instance and instant, I think we have a chance, from the comfort of our sofas and sitting rooms, to glimpse how human knowledge and aspirations, traditions and art, songs and music, may be intergrated, as they were in times past, to elevate the human spirit, in attempts by our ancestors and ourselves, to reach out to each other, or to an ultimate creator. It is a flashback to the earliest moments, when humans gathered round their fires to listen to the stories of their elders, or to carve images of their world upon the walls of the caves in which they lived.
I have transcribed the "lyrics" below, as they are difficult to pick up on a first listening. Even as "poetry", the words and ideas are amazing.
Enjoy, and best wishes for a happy, healthy and fulfilling new year in 2010.
L'hitraot,
Peter
P.S. - the video can be found at the bottom of the EC Forum webpage. Pause the "cadences" music-player first, as shown in this image on the right (which you can click on to see in an enlarged view.)
and PPS - and the beat goes on . . .
A Glorious Dawn
(Sagan: )
if you wish to make
an apple pie from scratch
you must first
Invent the universe. Space is filled
with a network of worm-holes
you might emerge
somewhere else in space
somewhen else
in time
The sky
calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will, one day,
Venture
To the stars
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunburst
But a galaxyburst
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
Or the rising of the Milky Way
The cosmos is full beyond measure
Elegant truths
Of exquisite interrelationships
Of the awesome
Machinery of Nature
I believe our future depends powerfully on how
well we understand this cosmos
in which we float
like a point of dust
in the morning sky
But the brain does
much more than just
ReCollect
It intercompares
It synthesizes
It analyzes
It generates abstractions
"The simplest thought like the concept of the number one
is an elaborate logical underpinning"
The brain has its own language
for testing the structure
and consistency of the world
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunburst
But a galaxyburst
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
Or the rising of the Milky Way
The sky
calls to us
If we do not destroy ourselves
We will, one day,
Venture
To the stars
(Hawking: )
For thousands of years
People have wondered about the universe
Did it stretch out forever
Or was there a limit
From the BigBang to BlackHoles
From third matter
To a possible BigCrunch
Our image of the universe today
is full of strangeSounding Ideas
(Sagan: )
How lucky are we?
To live
In this time
The first moment
inHuman history
When we are, inFact,
Visiting
OtherWorlds
A still more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunburst
But a galaxyburst
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
Or the rising of the Milky Way
A Still
more glorious dawn awaits
Not a sunburst
But a galaxyburst
A morning filled with 400 billion suns
Or the rising of the Milky Way
The surface
of the earth
is the shore of the cosmic ocean
Recently we have waded a little
WayOut
And the water seems inviting . . . .
