More on Carl Sagan - the other side of idols

I think from time to time it's good to remember that these people who we idolize are very much human. :) This idea is especially important to me if I were to, say, write a screen play or something about his life, which I really wish already existed. I'm not sure why I always want to do this, but if the future holds some way for me to accomplish this desire, then the following anecodotes seem important. These quotes are taken from a blog called Neatorama: 10 Neat Facts About Carl Sagan, but some of the facts are decidedly not neat. :)

Especially this one:

In 1994, Apple chose the internal codename "Carl Sagan" for its PowerMac 7100. Though it was meant as an homage to Carl (and an in-joke that the computer would make Apple "billions and billions" of dollars), they also used the codenames "Piltdown Man" and "Cold Fusion" for the Power Mac 6100 and 8100, respectively. When Carl found out that he was being put alongside scientific hoaxes, he sued Apple. Though Apple won the suit, the codename was changed to BHA (Butt Head Astronomer) ... which prompted yet another lawsuit from the p.o.'d astronomer!

and this

Carl's popularity had backfired on him not once but twice. In 1967, he was denied tenure at Harvard because his colleagues bristled at "what they perceived as self-aggrandizement and pandering to the public."

There were some more idol-puncturing thoughts in the reviews of his biographies.
One of them is Keay Davidson's Carl Sagan: A Life
The other is A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone

Amazon.com Review
Carl Sagan may have been one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. Then again, he may have been a relentless self-promoter who convinced everyone he was one of the greatest scientists who ever lived. Keay Davidson, science writer for the San Francisco Chronicle, aims to explain this complicated man in his biography. One thing is clear: Sagan was an extremely difficult man to love, a scientist whose passion for astronomy and biology was unparalleled, but who had little ability to express basic emotions to his wives and children. Davidson looks for reasons for this emotional distance in Sagan's childhood, when his relationship with his mother was intense and sometimes difficult. She encouraged her bright young son to be an "intellectual omnivore," to be passionate about knowledge, but she didn't give him the tools to relate to humans as individuals.

As his stellar science career developed, Sagan built a reputation as a leftist who believed that "science could serve liberal ideals," and as an arrogant man with an unshakable confidence in his own brain. Davidson writes that Sagan developed his famous skepticism as an undergraduate. Sagan suffered from a "troubling mix of intense emotion and stark rationalism," writes Davidson. He succeeded (mostly) in balancing passion with reason, a balance that made him a perfect popularizer of science, a trustworthy authority who preached that an open mind was the most valuable scientific tool. Davidson was influenced personally by Sagan's writings, and he sometimes works a little too hard at puncturing the myths surrounding Sagan, but this biography is one that deserves to be read by Sagan's fans and detractors alike. It's a compelling, very real assessment of an all-too-human god of science. --Therese Littleton

Another reviewer compares the two books, so I'm going to put that here too:
"John Rummel (Madison, WI) - See all my reviews

Carl Sagan : A Life by Keay Davidson; (see also my review at Carl Sagan : A Life in the Cosmos by William Poundstone - this review considers both books)
Carl Sagan is easily the second most famous scientist of the 20th century. If you came of age in the period 1970-1990, you were influenced by Sagan - period. Whatever you may think of him as a scientist, you must admit that nobody did more to popularize science in the public eye during this period. The two most obvious examples are his Cosmos television series and his numerous appearances with Johnny Carson on the Tonight Show.

Poundstone's book reflects Ann Druyan's influence much more than Davidson's. The result is a much more flattering account of Sagan's life, potentially minimizing some of the warts. Davidson, if anything, spends too much effort trying to psychohistorically analyze Sagan's two failed marriages and his fractured relationship with oldest son Dorion.

Davidson also focuses much more attention on Sagan's books, attempting to plot the development of his career as a scientist and maturity as a writer based on each book's unique character. Here again, he attempts to delve below the surface into the hidden motives and influences. For instance, while both Poundstone and Davidson detail Sagan's marijuana use, Davidson goes further and suggests that the Pulitzer-winning Dragon's of Eden was largely a marijuana- induced work.

William Poundstone Focuses more on his scientific achievements, with emphasis on the many conferences he chaired regarding SETI, exobiology, and his work on the Voyager and Mariner probes to Mars and the gas giants. Some of the reviews of the latter actually read like a popular scientific account of these missions, written around Sagan's contribution and perspective.

A very rough generalization would be that Davidson looks more closely at Sagan's personal life while Poundstone looks more closely at his scientific achievemnts, though both books do cover the whole picture. Poundstone's book left me with more of a positive regard for Sagan though, and struck me as the better book of the two. Poundstone's account strikes me as first and foremost a work of scientific biography, with more detail of Sagan's scientific achievements.

And finally, one more review, about the Poundstone book.

It is impossible to be neutral about Carl Sagan (1934-1996). Though supporters and detractors agree that he was one of the most brilliant and influential scientists of the 20th century, they argue about the ways he handled his gifts, fame and prominence. Poundstone (Prisoner's Dilemma; Big Secrets) does nothing to reconcile these disparities. Instead, he lays out the details of Sagan's life and work, revealing why some people idolized him and others disdained him. Sagan's overwhelming need for love and attention destroyed his first marriage to Lynn Margulis, Poundstone explains. Decades later, Margulis remains ambivalent, admiring Sagan the public figure but not the man. Second wife Linda Salzman could neither forgive Sagan nor understand his betrayal when he and their friend Ann Druyan announced that they were profoundly in love and planned to marry. Salzman is conspicuously missing from Poundstone's list of acknowledgments, just as Sagan's alienated best friend, Lester Grinspoon, was conspicuously absentAso reports PoundstoneAfrom Sagan's deathbed. Sagan's scientific and public life is best known for its central quest and mission: searching for extraterrestrial life and sharing his love of science with the world. The so-far fruitless quest for ET continues, but Sagan's mission succeeded beyond all expectations. Because his greatest allegiance was to truth, Sagan would probably like this book. It tells readers why he chose to warn the world about "nuclear winter" despite weaknesses in the theory, and it includes the influence of marijuana highs on his work. Poundstone does not draw conclusions, but presents the evidence of Sagan's life and allows readers to develop their own theories of what that life might mean to their own. 16 b&w photos. Agent, John Brockman. (Oct.)

Some thoughts of self-awareness

You can run yourself ragged with self-awareness. It seems lke self-awareness is the necessary condition, an obligation, for all cultural prodcution now. and its exhuasting, to try and anticipate all criticisms, reactions, and thoughts and them off by demonstrating your thoughtful awareness of yourself. This is why deeply sincere things, cultural products of earlier times, seem so attractive to me, I think. There are those who are blissfully un-self-aware. Often, we make fun of those people, laughing at their ideas and feeling alright for doing so because they surely won't even be aware of themselves enough to notice we are laughing at them. Like this man on the Little Grey Book lecture series who owns a presidential museum in Ohio and who claims that George Washington was not the first president, among other things, with illogical, self-aggrandizing committment. The audience laughes at all his direct quotes - they are indeed, laughable, implausible or impossible arguments, far-fetched and amazing propositions, all filtered through a supremely un-self-aware personality. It's easy to LIKE this man, for all his obviously misguided notions, in fact, they make him endearing, but only in so far as he is unaware of how ridiculous they sound. He is piteous more than respectable. But we really only like him because he is funny to us, the audience. There are those who deeply and earnestly beleive in something, who have no patience or maybe even lack the sense of humor to make fun of themselves, and do not elicit laughter, like (here is comes. . . .) Carl Sagan. His "cosmos" seem to be a product of an earlier time when you could be serious without the need to acknowledge the irony of what you were doing. I love traveling to his place, via pixellated youtube clips, because, as soon as I got over the slightly cheesy graphics, the outdated and therefore kind o fhumorous musical scores and the occassional bad joke, i realized he had won me over with his overwhelming sincerity. I couldn't laugh at him walking among models of planets anymore once I saw the earnestness with which he was sharing his beleifs to us. I admire this. It is refreshing and endearing and deserving of respect in a very different way than the cold, removed, distant irony of so many cultural products today. I think it is because these videos could so easily fall into ironic appreciation that I love them even more, because they defy you to like them that way. You can try, and get your joke tshirt with carl sagan's head on it, but that just betrays your superficial rleatiosnhip to it all. If you allow yourself to put aside the obligation of hyper-self-awareness, you can see something very lovely and true unfolding, or at least that's how I see it. And that's the place where I'd like to be.

On Sandy Skoglund - some notes from some books

Back to Sandy Skoglund, this time with more information.

In an interview with Robert Rosenblum

Notes about her life: She went to University of Iowa and was interested in "Hollywood narrative structure"

She talks about how it has to do with prejudices in the culture - against snakes and scaly, hard surfaces "reptilian" "as well as Jungian or Freudian yearnings for things soft and cuddly." Her "Walking on Eggshells" has snakes and bunnies in it. AHHHH.

But then there is this shift "for example, the purpose [with Radioactive Cats] there was to undermine the stereotype in our culture of the cute, domesticated pet. The cats are meant to dominate the scene as survivors in a postnuclear situation because they've adapted by turning green."

This is really interesting to me for a few reasons, One is a little dumb, I'm fascinated by this convention that bright lime green is automatically this science-fictiony, radioactive, creepy.

This idea of things taking over, crawling, something inocuous becoming a real problem, is something I love, and she has one called "Atomic Love" where RAISINS are covering everything. And that is so great. Because a raisin is so cute and small and actually kind of funny to me, and then there are thousands of them and they totally make me want to scream and run away. The interviewer in this book describes it as "the kind of horrific conversion of infinitely small things suddenly blotting out humanity . . . it's such a fascinating mix of supermarket abundance and the extinction of us poor individuals . . . " (emphasis mine). This is so fascinating to me that abundance, which I have previously talked about as being safe and secure in it's plentitude, actually becomes horrific at a certain point. I love when it becomes threatening.

She said something about drawing a line between an art installation and a fun house. I LOVE THE FUN HOUSE. So creepy. :) I kind of secretly wish I could create things like that, a room full of the balloons, mirrors, floating up to the sky. Loosing your balloon, or being overwhelmed by other balloons. This also has the do with a stalker thing - "YOU ARE SO SPECIAL." So much so that i bought you 900 balloons. CREEP.

She did one called "Sock Situation." I think this is FANTASTIC. She talks about how the objects in the photos break up the space, almost crawl across the surface, which I can totally see in this one. The best part is the guy trying to vacuum one up. :) She did this for a display window in Barney's Dept. Store, by the way.

Her choice of color, she says, was about rejecting the black and white photography of the 70's and "just wanting to be bad, in poor taste, and make something that was aggressive on the wall."

They talk about how her work has to do with horror, science fiction, and Suburbia (!)
"Science fiction presented a landscape that reflected the depth of my experience of suburban life in America because it's a landscape of openness, of empty space, and a lot of anxiety going on in that open space."

"To me, terror is more terrifying if it relates closely to ordinary life. If it's more plausible, its more terrifying."

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Carol Squiers:
"Throughout her work Skoglund sets up a series of disquieting oppositions, among them visuality versus content, celebration versus critique, whimsy versus horror, the banal versus the extraordinary, the dream versus the nightmare." I LOVE THIS.

This author also talks a lot about what the photograph means as it is displayed next to the installation. Which makes me think about what a painting might do next to a thing, or how one might not have to abandon painting things in order to utilize other media. Because the relationship between the two (even trying to figure out what is different -- in her case the presence or absence of actual humans is pretty huge-- is really interesting.) The photograph is the lens through which she composes the whole installation, though, which is really cool. She makes sure none of the animals overlap or obscure eachother from the camera's viewpoint.

She did an early performance piece where she kicked "colored candies" (jellybeans and gumdrops) around the floor and swept them up in a "parody of abstract expressionism" which the author calls her first experiment in what she calls "the inappropriate use of food." I like that phrase too. Candy is an untapped area here. To me anyway, because the kid fantasy, and even an adult fantasy, is to have just TONS of candy, so much more than you could ever eat -- the whole thing with saving Easter bunnies a whole year just so there is another one to replace it. So . . .

She said she was "trying to make something that my relatives could understand."

They mention how "orderly repetetivness" can give a "nightmarish quality." Like marching bands? :) [ much of my previous work is about marching bands ]

On why she sculpts the animals herself: "I didn't want to critique 'catness' as seen by our culture, which is what would happen if I went out and got a found-object cat to photograph; using found objects is inevitably very toungue-in-cheek, coy, kitsch. So I decided to make a cat." I like this too.

They talk a lot about her flattening visual space with the colors or the pattern.

Revenge of the Goldfish is so great because they are floating. How aresome is this??

And now, here are just a deluge of images of her and her work:

Also, I am constantly amazed that people don't bring her up more often, either to me because I'm really into repetition, animals, weirdness, etc, but in general. People don't see to know who she is, yet I find all of this to be fantastic and great and overflowing with content. 

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.

"For future times and peoples" . . . More on the Golden Record

Though the UIUC library does not seem to own a copy of the record itself (put it out in a limited release), the friendly and super-helpful "ask a librarian chat window" person directed me to a website in which you can listen to the audio on the record online.

Golden Record Sounds
Note: The first sounds are straight out of the X-Files, and the Mozart Magic Flute aria is astounding. This woman manages to sound like either a violin or an extremely high-pitched horn instrument . . . which is an awe-inspiring sound I have never heard a human voice do before and I think I actually opened my mouth and made a gasping noise when I heard it.

There is actually an official NASA page on the Golden Record as well:
NASA Golden Record Voyager Intersellar Mission

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In addition, I acquired a book from the UIUC library called "Murmurs of the Earth" written by Carl Sagan, F.D. Drake, Ann Druyan, Timothy Ferris, Jon Lomberg, and Linda Salzman Sagan.

This, by the way, is the book cover. I actually thought the pressed gold circle on plain black fabric was kind of breath-taking. And it makes me want to stick a gold circle on my painting.

The book is all about the Voyager project, and specifically the creation of the records. I have some brief notes, quotes, and commentary below.

"For future times and peoples" is the title of Carl Sagan's introductory essay, which I think is a really lovely phrase. I think that is what we're all doing with art, in a way. . . or at least I feel that I am. That much less permanent drawings or paintings are just futile gestures to the future and an attempt to "survive our time so that we may live into yours." (Jimmy Carter on the record).

- the fundamental realities of the universe are math and physics. I think this is fascinating, that since the laws of physics and math are presumably the same throughout the universe, those will be the only constants we can expect to encounter. Biology may be completely different, atomic structure or molecules he says, but not the laws of math. So . . .
"Because of the relationship between music and mathematics, and the anticipated universality of mathematics, it may be that much more than our emotions are conveyed by the musical offerings on the Voyager record." 14

I think this is fascinating . . . that perhaps so much is encoded in our musical language . . . or perhaps that their communication will be completely meaningless, like a string of 1's and 0's to someone who doesn't translate binary. . . hmmm. This goes back to trying to reach for universals, to find something transcendent. "I want to believe" in something.

". . . they are now irretrievably set on trajectories that will take them out of our solar system." 7 So lonely and empty.

"This plaque also contains a sketch of two representatives of the human species greeting the cosmos with hope." 8 (referring to the previous plaques on. . . Pioneer maybe?

Why copyright law and beaurocracy is maddeningly ridiculous

They wanted to send "here comes the sun" by the Beatles, and "all four Beatles gave their approval. But the Beatles did not own the copyright, and the legal status of the piece seemed to murky to risk." 19.

"By late May 1977 the general configuration of the musical selections was becoming clear. Each selection to be included would have to have a copyright release, because the International Copyright Convention restricts the reproduction of a piece of music "for any purposes whatever," presumably including extraterrestrial purposes." 22

"There was no way that NASA was going to launch full frontal nudity to the stars." 35

A few reasons why I really wish this were a movie

25. I liked how he switched from a paragraph about delegates from all the countries leaving long commentary to this. page break, and then "Roger Payne of Rockefeller University is a zoologist who has performed important studies of great whales in the free ocean. From a small boat he has trailed hydrophones beneath the surface of the ocean and recorded the tantalizing, enigmatic, haunting "songs" of the humpback and other whales. . . ." If I were to make a movie . . . well, I'd want to see one on this whole process. Why is this not a movie?

"After weighing the matter for about a day, NASA decided it was essential to include on the Voyager record at least the names of a large number of senators and representatives, especially those whose committees had cognizance of NASA activities. As a result, 4 additional pictures were added at the very last moment to the Voyager record with the information that is contained int he boxes on pages 30 and 21. So in case the reader wonders who it is, say, that Senator John Stennis of Mississippi has his name aboard the Voyager record, I suppose it goes back to Kurt Waldheim and the nature of beaurocracies." 29. amazing. they also had this amazing story of how to accommodate these new images, because there was a special recorder lent to them from Honeywell and the picture transcription had to be supervised by personel at Cornell, so someone had to fly with the recorder back to Boulder, CO at this video place that did it for them before, . . .29. totally amazing little rush story about it. and since the turnaround was so short, they had to reserve a seat for the recorder on the plane since it wasn't safe to put it in cargo. "It turns out that airlines have difficultly coping with concept of a seat for a piece of equipment. The solution, we found, was to reserve a seat for an individual named "Mr. Equipment." Since Mr. Equipment was under the age of ten, he was able to fly at half fare." 32 I LOVE IT.

I think it is interesting, and a little note to why artists and writers and people who make their living by using their imaginations are important. :)
"Because some science fiction writers with backgrounds in the sciences have been thinking about such problems longer than most of the rest of us, I also queried my friends Isaac Asimov, Arthur Clarke and Robert Heinlein." 11 (for work on the plaque)