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.

On the X-Files . . .

I continue to return to the X-files as something I admire and am in awe of. I say this not simply because the X-Files was my chosen object for the junior-high obession phase of my life, nor because to this day, if I were to taylor-make the phsyical specifications of an ideal man, he would undoubtedly be either David Duchnovy or Jim Sturgess, but because after retrospective examination and, I hope, a better sense of objective consideration, I think the show actually did a number of things very well. In particular, the dual ability to portray something at this at immediate in its enterainment value - compelling, interesting, and unique, while aslo more subtlely (or perhaps not) addressing much bigger things. The show grapples, of course, with huge, metaphysical issues both literally and more symbolically, but does so in such a way that the audience may not even realize what truly meaningful points are being raised. "I want to Believe" and "Trust no one" are iconic phrases, easily dismissed as part-and-parcel of a show dedicated to paranoia and drama. But for me, the way the show considers these big ideas using the specifc storylines of government cover-ups, alien abductions, and folklore finding real atecedents, allows me to temporarily forget about the biases I have when thinking about belief in my own life. Not to be too revealing or self-indulgent, but as a person who once felt a great presence of faith in my personal life and then progressively lost that sense of faith, the phrase "I want to believe" is incredibly compelling because it is true. What I think mainstream attempts for conversion or even discussion of belief are missing is that sometimes it is best to consider the basis of belief, the desire for it, and its relatioship to who you are in a whole different context.

For another example, listen to this great NPR interview with David Duchovny, who I deem a perfectly legitimate scholarly reference, by the way, since he was on his way to a masters degree in English from Princeton before changing paths in life. As you will hear, for him, the episode where a player in the Negro League turns out to be an alien, while entetaining in its own right, is also playing with the themes of aliens and alientation. fantastic.

To weave these additional layers of meaning into otherwise creative/entertaining projects takes talent. Making direct statements about these topics often falls flat, has no appeal, and no staying power. And making the creative material that is basically the mental equivalent of eating popcorn makes no demands of the intellect at all.

This duality of the xfiles, to be at once entertaining and enjoyable and, upon closer, nerdier inspection, an attempt to explore something much larger and more universal, is something I admire in a number of forms of enterainment. Jonathan Coulton songs, for instance.

It is a perfeclty nerdy thing to do . . . take something well beyond its face value and inscribe great levels of meaning and significance to all its actions. The same fervor with which I applied my interest in knowing episode names and quotes as a 7th grade girl has morphed into an adult interest in the larger structure, the behind-the-scenes creative work which directed these fascinating details into a compelling story. This nerdy tendency is perhaps why shows like the X-Files or music like Jonathan Coulton's is so interesting to those of us who over-analyize a little too much.

Straw dog . . . and Clifford

straw dog: In business, something (an idea, or plan, usually) set up to be knocked down. It's the dangerous philosophy of presenting one mediocre idea, so that the listener will make the choice of the better idea which follows.

straw dog: Something that is made only to be destroyed.

So. . . i feel like we have this idea that death is some kind of abomination - something unnatural. . . a wrong done to us that shouldn't happen and maybe something about the fatlism . . . like we were CREATED to be destroyed. That is the whole point? It makes me sad. It reminds me of a really disturbing part of a Clifford book in which Clifford the Big Red Dog gets a little tiny pet robot dog that he smashes by accident. There is something scary about this big, well-meaning animal that can just squish stuff without meaning to. He's about *this close* to destroying things without really even knowing it. Which reminds me of America. And marching bands. Which is different than the straw-dog concept I guess in that the danger of this big puppy is that not intentional, but the straw-dog idea is more ominous in being intentional. But I really like the idea of a huge dog, even if he may or may not smash you by accident.

He looks so harmless here, doesn't he?

My conclusion: I need to paint literal straw dogs. :) What would that even look like? Or maybe I need to paint enormous, oversized, possibly dangerous dogs.

Maybe what I think is dangerous is that it is dangerous to love something. Because it could, indeed, be smashed.

Also. . . on another tangentially-related note: Looking through Clifford stuff makes me remember that the death of a pet is often the first experience with death that children have, and that many many books deal with the death of a pet. So as I continue to explore death (Old Yeller? Where the Red Fern Grows? Saddest stories ever. . . .) perhaps I need to keep thinking about how dogs related to that. Not that I want them to, because I like them much better alive.