cosmology and art
I felt better this morning. Morning notes: From Eden to Exile, Alexander the Great.
I took my time. I lingered over my cereal bowl long enough to finish the article in the August Discover magazine that I was reading, "Testing String Theory" by Michio Kaku. I've been keeping tabs on string theory (a cosmological theory that seeks to explain all physical phenomena in terms of ultramicroscopic 1-dimensional "strings" that vibrate in up to 11 dimensions, including our 4 dimensions of space and time) since 1990, when I first heard about it. (I heard of it during the one brief conversation I had while doing a 10-day solitary meditation retreat on Salt Spring Island. A resident monk on the land stopped by to say hello, and we got talking about cosmology, among other things.) String theorists are seeking to "derive" all of physical reality, including all its particles, forces, and constants, from a single set of related mathematical equations. The ultimate set of rules to the game called our universe would have been discovered--or so they hope.
So I read that. I liked Kaku's writing and his outlook. I should read the book of his I bought back in 1994, Hyperspace: a scientific odyssey through parallel universes, time warps, and the 10th dimension, when I was flush with TV cash and a member of a scientific book club. Its time will come.
I bought that book, actually, as part of my research for what eventually evolved into the project I'm working on now. At that time I was preparing a science-fiction novel about a radically altered future Earth, but starting in the near future with actual astronomers. I had given it the working title Ears, because my main guys were radio astronomers (a discipline I once thought I'd like to get into), and I was thinking of setting the action at a radio observatory such as the one at White Lake in B.C.'s Okanagan valley. My characters were involved in the search for "dark matter", the mysterious invisible source of most of the gravity in the universe, at that time a new and hot topic in astronomy. (It's still hot, just not so new.) The nature of the dark matter, and the more recently discovered "dark energy", is still unknown.
How did my story about radio astronomers evolve into a historical epic about the throne of Israel? Easy. The dark matter for me was (and is) a symbol of the spiritual: an invisible reality interpenetrated with and influencing the visible world we think we live in. My current project is The Age of Pisces, the precessional ages that reflect the largest cosmological view available to the period of my story. And we are still living in the spiritual fallout of the issues surrounding the monarchy of ancient Israel.
There's more to it, of course, but in a way I feel I've already said too much. It's better for the artist not to be too explicit about his intentions. Such is the balance that I must seek with this blog: how much of what kinds of things to say. Ideally I'd like to generate interest in my work, rather than satisfying any curiosity in advance.
I wrote only 2 pages today--mainly interpolated material earlier in the scene I'm working on. But I felt good about it. It is a work of art. I'm not embarrassed to say it. It is a work of art and as such deserves its own rules of creation, which might not be convenient even for its creator.
I took my time. I lingered over my cereal bowl long enough to finish the article in the August Discover magazine that I was reading, "Testing String Theory" by Michio Kaku. I've been keeping tabs on string theory (a cosmological theory that seeks to explain all physical phenomena in terms of ultramicroscopic 1-dimensional "strings" that vibrate in up to 11 dimensions, including our 4 dimensions of space and time) since 1990, when I first heard about it. (I heard of it during the one brief conversation I had while doing a 10-day solitary meditation retreat on Salt Spring Island. A resident monk on the land stopped by to say hello, and we got talking about cosmology, among other things.) String theorists are seeking to "derive" all of physical reality, including all its particles, forces, and constants, from a single set of related mathematical equations. The ultimate set of rules to the game called our universe would have been discovered--or so they hope.
So I read that. I liked Kaku's writing and his outlook. I should read the book of his I bought back in 1994, Hyperspace: a scientific odyssey through parallel universes, time warps, and the 10th dimension, when I was flush with TV cash and a member of a scientific book club. Its time will come.
I bought that book, actually, as part of my research for what eventually evolved into the project I'm working on now. At that time I was preparing a science-fiction novel about a radically altered future Earth, but starting in the near future with actual astronomers. I had given it the working title Ears, because my main guys were radio astronomers (a discipline I once thought I'd like to get into), and I was thinking of setting the action at a radio observatory such as the one at White Lake in B.C.'s Okanagan valley. My characters were involved in the search for "dark matter", the mysterious invisible source of most of the gravity in the universe, at that time a new and hot topic in astronomy. (It's still hot, just not so new.) The nature of the dark matter, and the more recently discovered "dark energy", is still unknown.
How did my story about radio astronomers evolve into a historical epic about the throne of Israel? Easy. The dark matter for me was (and is) a symbol of the spiritual: an invisible reality interpenetrated with and influencing the visible world we think we live in. My current project is The Age of Pisces, the precessional ages that reflect the largest cosmological view available to the period of my story. And we are still living in the spiritual fallout of the issues surrounding the monarchy of ancient Israel.
There's more to it, of course, but in a way I feel I've already said too much. It's better for the artist not to be too explicit about his intentions. Such is the balance that I must seek with this blog: how much of what kinds of things to say. Ideally I'd like to generate interest in my work, rather than satisfying any curiosity in advance.
I wrote only 2 pages today--mainly interpolated material earlier in the scene I'm working on. But I felt good about it. It is a work of art. I'm not embarrassed to say it. It is a work of art and as such deserves its own rules of creation, which might not be convenient even for its creator.
posted by paulv at
3:30 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home