THE STARRY MESSSENGER

Why do we care about creation?

A flaw at the heart of the argument for truth

Wherever I go I take my camera with me, to record the visible reality, a digital imprint of the visible light reflected from objects in the world.

An objective registration of visual phenomena is no more the truth of the world than a dead body is the truth of the deceased person.

A person is not a flat image, not even a three-dimensional thing, but a subject with whom you must engage as another subject.

The same is true of trees and plants

and even of inanimate things such as mountains and bodies of water.

The painter can not copy a pictorial imprint of the scene, but must try to capture and re-enact its life, he has to feel its 'breath'.

You have to know the place to feel its 'breath'.

Otherwise it is just a lonely place, a vacancy, a passive angst in the ambiguious light.

It matters to go and explore, to find out where we come from so we can find out where we are heading....

WE ARE WHAT WE BELIEVE CAN BE...so if you believe in our own limitations,

it is reality, and with it comes really difficult and uncomfortable things we have to raise...

both about society around us and ourselves, how we have to confront our own prejudices, the idea of identity.

When we think we have a clear idea of how the world works and all of a sudden we find ourselves completely out of our elements.

We hate the loss of control, we are victims, yes, but we don't realise we are also complicits in our own downfall.

What matters is not our ideological balance or even our historical truth but the perception of our vision, how we see the world through the shared prism of knowledge and hope,

it is all about where we have been and where we plan to go....

It is all about every child to have a chance to find themselves...

It is all about our ability to understand that each of us in our own unique way is a valuable particle of our great mysterious universe...

The Starry Messenger

revealed new Galileo's discoveries

in 1610

people peered

for the first time

through a telescope

to see the moon's mountains

and millions of stars

of the Milky Way

The sky started to reveal

its mysteries

the human eye

was suddenly enough

to spot Jupiter's four largest moons

they stood there

sharpening their gaze

longing to understand

the very essence of everything

the universe

it took them

hundreds of years

to find out

that the smallest particles

in a big creation

make each one of us.

In 2010 under endless Patagonian sky

one composer

opened 'The Starry Messenger'

and his friend,

accordionist

started to play

a beautiful melody

as if through the telescope

and under the microscope

the textures

the patterns

from which

the melody emerged

and into which it dissolved,

point to a more

molecular,

atomic reality.

Today I am sitting in a small concert hall

listening to the Australian premiere

of Oswaldo Goliov's 'Sidereus'

Despite

our fleeting

attention

span,

our unhappy

acknowledgement

that our longing

for new knowledge

and experience

cost us more

than we gain

at least in traditional sense

and yet

every new scientific discovery

a piece of music

or visual art

stop us

for a moment

to contemplate

something far,

far bigger

than ourselves.

Barbara-Smith-Young-Arrow

a Canadian psychologist

applauds enthusiastically

next to me.

"Fabiola Gianotti said,

we are nothing but quarks

and electrons

and a lot of empty space,"

she says:

"She headed one of the teams

using the particle accelerator

to crash protons

into one another

in a speed of light

to discover God Particle,

isn't that amazing?"

"People ask,

why it is so important

to discover the particle

that gives mass,"

I nod cautiously.

"That's the trouble with particle physics,

it exists on a plane

that the brain

doesn't visit

and whole defies

our intiutive sense

of order and reason,

of cause and effect,

of the very upness and downdness

of up and down,

maybe therefore I like it so much."

"Are you physicist?"

"No way, not me,"

she laughs,

"They told me at school

that my brain doesn't function properly,

that I have to learn to accept my limitation,

so now I like to test my previous teachers,

if they are able to catch up with our new

scientific discoveries."

"This is my 'Starry Messenger'"

Barbara hands me proudly

a signed copy of her book:

'The woman who changed her brain'

"Do not look up to stars,"

an old man passing us,

murmurs under his breath,

"because the best you can hope for

is to die in your sleep..."

"Stagnation and change,

just like energy

and matter

are like steam

and ice,

two different states

of the same thing.

It is time for us

to find new way

of perceiving,"

she shouts after him.

"Sometimes I feel we prefer

dark energy,

looking for things that pull us apart,

rather than holding us together,"

I nod hugging the book with both my hands:

"I wish every student with learning difficulties

would find their brains plastic just like you."

There is so much we don't know,

there is so much we need to learn,

I hope we never loose

our thirst for knowing it all

because we are much more

than lost souls

living in our inner worlds

in the society

from which we come

the society that often makes

us feel so alien

and the landscape

through which we move,

struggling to find our place....