People are always talking of originality but what does that mean? As soon as we are born the world begins to act on us and this goes on to the end. And, after all, what we call our own, except energy, strength and will?
Goethe
‘Allegory reminds us that by necessity reality skids away from logic, and it is this gap, this apparent imperfection, that nourishes the sacred as the desire for and the impossibility of the union between truth and mean- ing.’
Michael Taussig
A couple of years ago I bumped into this film about the universe that was created by the AMNH Museum, as part of an exhibition titled ‘Visions of the Cosmos: From the Milky Ocean to an Evolving Universe‘, at the Rubin Museum of Art in Manhattan in 2010.
The film, titled ‘The Known Universe’, is based on precise scientific observations and research and that is what makes it so beautiful and almost incredible. I have watched it many times trying to make myself understand the size and scale of our universe. It is absolutely wonder(ful) that this is real and we are part of it! And to this day, hard as I may try I can hardly grasp the immensity of the known objects, space, events and territories we call cosmos.
As the Hayden planetary people say on the webpage they made a year after they first showed this film:
‘For scientists, those areas that appear blank, where we have yet to point our telescopes, offer more curiosity.’
Imagine that…
I imagine that yes is the only living thing.
e. e. cummings
Perhaps the entire evolution of the spirit is a question of the body… In the long run, it is not a question of man at all: he is to be overcome
F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power
There is a vitality, a life force, an energy, a quickening, that is translated through you into action, and because there is only one of you in all time, this expression is unique.
And if you block it, it will never exist through any other medium and will be lost.
Martha Graham
And to do art only for the high feeling of completion and connectedness in the moment of inspiration would be like making love only for the moment of orgasm.
Stephen Nachmanovitch, “Free Play: Improvising in Life and Art”
A documentary on Borges. At the very beginning it sounds a bit too “proud” for the man about to portray, but very quickly it becomes interesting, informative and engaging.
Here is a Borges quote from an interview of him featured in this doc:
“Reality is a combination of perceptions, emotions, feelings, distractions, dreams and surprises. That is reality”
The soul, which is created quick to love,
responds to everything that pleases, just
as soon as beauty wakens it to act.Your apprehension draws an image from
a real object and expands upon
that object until soul has turned toward it;and if, so turned, the soul tends steadfastly,
then that propensity is love—it’s nature
that joins the soul in you, anew, through beauty.
Dante, Divina Comedia, Purgatorio, Canto 18, verses 19 – 27
escape from a bankrupt state 