Dynamic Stillness

That is the newest album by one of my favorite, and most prolific artists, Steve Roach. J and I have been waiting for just the right time to hook the splitter up to his IPod and watch the sky while listening to this over 2-hour compilation. And it was last night.

The music, if you can call the ambient paintings such, starts right off, unlike some of the others that volume more slowly. The aural inundation, made complete by the stereo headset I donned, only served to bring the dark sky closer, and at first I felt a type of panic that I sometimes do when listening to certain dark ambient music, in the dark - a feeling of falling into space, with no tether... a loss of footing, gravity. Perhaps you too are one of those people who can ascribe color to sounds, and let them guide you on an inner visual journey. This was different, the first time I'd experienced 'space' this way, and it was eerie.

My eyes wandered over the stars, noticing relationships they had to each other. Funny, I thought, out here, this... cosmos; there is no air for bigotry, hatred; all the room in the world, so to speak, and no sadness, misery; the stuff we are made of, this 'star stuff' - inside each one of us, while out there, in the nebulae, new stars are being born. Beyond jealousy, fear, beyond... emotion even. Just awareness. Before we come here, there is awareness of everything. I'm sure it returns after we leave. Just trying to get back some of that while we're here...

There is Orion, I notice his dagger, and squint to see the end the faint star that makes the binary system there; how blue that little star is, I remember seeing through the U of A telescope, thinking it was so diamond-like sparkly. There is the Big Dipper, just sitting on the horizon. Where is my beloved scorpion? haven't been able to see it in a while. A planet is shining bright; I think I read that it was Mercury, tho Saturn is out too; but the biggest attraction is the formation down the middle of the darkness, what looks like clouds or space dust, split down the center. J, the budding astrophysicist, reminds me that the 'dust' I'm seeing isn't that, but the reflection of the light coming from millions of stars that make up our dear galaxy, of which we are located on the edge. Even further out, more galaxies light up the universe, their little crystal spirals weaving to and fro in space. They put out various colors, like certain stars even - and as I heard it said on NPR once, even different frequencies! Imagine, a space-time orchestra. Concerto for the Eagle's Head Nebula, in G minor. And over here...

What would space smell like? If there were enough particles together to even make a smell? Which I hear there aren't. Not enough particles to reflect the light that is shining everywhere, at all times -the space in between is empty, vacuous. But - not empty. The waves of light/energy are still flowing, in all directions, invisible to our eyes. Our eyes, so limited in picking up frequencies, makes a mockery of our feeble "seeing is believing" crap. Even my Eagle Eyes blue-light blocking sunglasses reveal things to me that are normally obscured, what would a pair of glasses show us, if we could see things to the Nth degree? Would we then believe in miracles? When we can see dark matter, dark energy; even the anti-matter of sci-fi renown. Yes, it exists. Our instruments have been out-recording our eyes for a very long time. Who can say they believe only what they see? Do they understand how limited these ocular devices are?

I soften my eyes to see all within my view at once. Meteors soar through the atmo, sometimes burning out in a faint white line; one larger one left a visible streak for miles, before vanishing in a few seconds. Closer - I pull away my shirt. Naked, raw. Nothing between my skin and the cosmos. The slight breeze whispers across me, forming words I cannot hear, only feel. My breath is the darkness. The stars are my eyes. The womb of the galaxy is my womb, stars within me. How can there be anything else, anything other than this total, complete amazement? Lost connections, humans. No longer recognizing earth mother, sky father, sister and brother, or each other. So lost they strike out, against others, against... themselves. Disconnected. If only they could see. Maybe the "bright light" is really us returning to the star whence we were born.