How do you make an un-ironic portrait of Carl Sagan?

The world may never know.

Connections: Specialness, balloons, and yes, Carl Sagan

OK. CONNECTION. The balloons of my previous work are about SPECIALNESS. Scratch that. Maybe ALL OF IT is about specialness. :) Things that are special and making you feel special. I think that is why the things that make me want to cry, make me want to cry. Special things mean they are the only, it means they are set aside and there is just that one, and there is such a HUGE desire in each of us, I think, to be special. But this is in total conflict with so much about what we know about the world. There is no privileged position because even "special" people are ordinary, and even special people get into car wrecks or plane crashes or get cancer. They are not protected from losing the things that are truly special, to them, their family and friends. And we are supposed to think that people are special, so then the only way to deal with things like knowing that 100,000 or however many people died in the earthquake in Haiti is to assume that the number of them makes the individuals less special, they seem less significant. That's what the numbers do for us. There is this extreme tension between wanting to be special, knowing that each individual is unique (a snow flake, if you will. . . which you shouldn't) and knowing that we are just one of a million species on earth. And now for the Carl Sagan connection (because you've been waiting and of course there is one). At the beginning of Pale Blue Dot, he goes through a very similar set of "demotions" that Robert Kruhlwich does on another episode of Radio Lab which recounts the history of humanity's place in the universe as we have seen it. It goes through a long list, essentially saying, "well, if we aren't at the center of the solar system, maybe our SOLAR system is the center of the galaxy!" etc. ad infinitum . .. down to our species being the only one that can do X, which we periodically change so that we are the top species, most important one, on the planet and ideally the ONLY one in the universe. But we are both heartbreakingly small and unique in that there might only be this one version of us anywhere, and horrifyingly mundane, just another planet around another star. Carl Sagan seems almost obsessed with teaching us this fact, that we are nothing, a speck on a speck on a speck, a "mote of dust" and that our egocentrism or earth-centrism or human-centrism is disguising reality. Every culture on Earth has believed that it was the chosen one, selected by God or even just by nature, as the pinnacle and most important. Even scientists fall prey to this desire to be SPECIAL. (All of this is illustrated much more eloquently, of course, by Carl Sagan). The point is that there is a very delicate balance, a struggle perhaps, between wanting desperately to be special and the heartbreaking knowledge that we are not. That there are "billions and billions" [sorry]. . . of human beings teeming on the planet but as each one of us is extinguished, it isn't really all that significant. It makes me think about this idea of pests and pets - the fine line between them - and the comment someone made in a critique which has stuck with me - that whenever we try to justify the killing of one particular group of people, we cast them as non-human ("cockroaches" often) and when we keep something as a pet, we make it more human, like our dogs. The more special something is, the tighter we hold to it, and the more plentiful, the easier it is to wipe them out, as a whole rather than individual, special parts.

This is, by the way, that famous pale blue dot photograph:

And here is an audio story of the anniversary of the "famous photograph that almost didn't happen" from NPR: An Alien View of Earth.

Also, here is an audio slideshow talking about those very changes in our perspective of ourselves from NPR: Views Of Earth From The Middle Ages To The Space Age.

Two related passages from Carl Sagan's "Broca's Brain"

Here are two quoted passages from Carl Sagan's book "Broca's Brain" that I found to be particularly moving for me and that, after writing them down, seem oddly related. They could, perhaps form the crux of a new piece? :) Who knows. Anyway:

from "Life in the Solar System" Chpater 12 of Carl Sagan's book "Broca's Brain"
A Quote from Anton van Leeuwenhoek

"On April 24th, 1676, observing this water by chance, I saw therein with great wonder unbelievably very many small animacules of various sorts; among others, some that were three to four times as long as broad. Their entire thickness was, in my judgment, not much thicker than one of the little hairs that cover the body of a louse. These creatures had very short, thin legs in front of the head (although I recognize no head, I speak of the head for the reason that this part always went forward during movement) . . . Close to the hindmost part lay a clear globule; and I judged that the very hindmost part was slightly cleft. These animacules are very cute while moving about, oftentimes tumbling all over."

I love this part (the bold emphasis is mine). . .to think of them as being very "cute" even if this is an old use of the word that no longer quite applies :) or has the same meaning

and then thi one p. 150- "The Sun's Family" from Carl Sagan's Broca's brain. In the beginning of this chapter, he describes what it might have been like for some outside intelligent being to watch the activity of Earth from afar (I think he ends with something about how "something interesting is happening on Earth lately" :))

". . . But nothing in those eons of time leaves the planet. And then the planet suddenly begins to fire tiny dispersals throughout the inner solar system, first in orbit around the Earth, then to the planet's blasted and lifeless natural satelite, the Moon. Six capsules--small, but larger than the rest--set down on the Moon, and from each, two tiny bipeds can be discerned, briefly exploring their surroundings and then hotfooting it back to the Earth, having extended tentatively a toe in the cosmic ocean. . . . ."

goes on to list alll the other probes and sateleites, etc. How charming, his view of us. I want to paint that, I think. The two tiny bipeds. :) it makes us seem so adorable.

This one makes me think of this image, which I have always loved but can't really say why.

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This is, by the way, the piece that emerged from these two quotes. I deeply loved making it, even if the drawing is not that great. And I keep wanting to go back to the place I was in when I made it, listening to the Brandenberg concertos.