{"id":7948,"date":"2010-11-19T06:59:22","date_gmt":"2010-11-19T11:59:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/?p=7948"},"modified":"2010-11-19T07:02:31","modified_gmt":"2010-11-19T12:02:31","slug":"hanging-in-the-sky","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/2010\/11\/hanging-in-the-sky\/","title":{"rendered":"Hanging in the Sky"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a>\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

[For information about this image, see the note<\/a> at the foot of this post.]\n

From whiskey river<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

This is the Dream<\/strong><\/p>\n

This is the dream we carry through the world
\nthat something fantastic will happen
\nthat it has to happen
\nthat time will open by itself
\nthat doors shall open by themselves
\nthat the heart will find itself open
\nthat mountain springs will jump up
\nthat the dream will open by itself
\nthat we one early morning
\nwill slip into a harbor
\nthat we have never known.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Olav H. Hauge<\/a>, translated by Robert Bly and Robert Hedin, from The Dream We Carry: Selected and Last Poems<\/em>)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Wonder begins with the element of surprise. The now almost obsolete word “wonderstruck” suggests that wonder breaks into consciousness with a dramatic suddenness that produces amazement or astonishment. Because of the suddenness with which it appears, wonder reduces us momentarily to silence. We associate gaping, breathlessness, bewilderment, and even stupor with wonder, because it jolts us out of the world of common sense in which our language is at home. The language and categories we customarily use to deal with experience are inadequate to the encounter, and hence we are initially immobilized and dumbfounded. We are silent before some new dimension of meaning which is being revealed.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Sam Keen, from Apology for Wonder<\/em>)<\/p>\n

…and<\/a> (italicized portion):<\/p>\n

You are standing in the sky. When we think of the sky, we tend to look up, but the sky actually begins at the earth. We walk through it, yell into it, rake leaves, wash the dog, and drive cars in it. We breathe it deep within us. With every breath, we inhale millions of molecules of sky, heat them briefly, and then exhale them back into the world.<\/em> At this moment, you are breathing some of the same molecules once breathed by Leonardo da Vinci, William Shakespeare, Anne Bradstreet, or Colette. Inhale deeply. Think of The Tempest.<\/em> Air works the bellows of our lungs, and it powers our cells. We say “light as air,” but there is nothing lightweight about our atmosphere, which weighs 5,000 trillion tons. Only a clench as stubborn as gravity’s could hold it to the earth; otherwise it would simply float away and seep into the cornerless expanse of space.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Diane Ackerman, from A Natural History of the Senses<\/em>)<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Not from whiskey river<\/em>:<\/p>\n

Entrance<\/strong><\/p>\n

Whoever you are: step out of doors tonight,
\nOut of the room that lets you feel secure.
\nInfinity is open to your sight.
\nWhoever you are.
\nWith eyes that have forgotten how to see
\nFrom viewing things already too well-known,
\nLift up into the dark a huge, black tree
\nAnd put it in the heavens: tall, alone.
\nAnd you have made the world and all you see.
\nIt ripens like the words still in your mouth.
\nAnd when at last you comprehend its truth,
\nThen close your eyes and gently set it free.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Rainer Maria Rilke, translated by Dana Gioia)<\/p>\n

…and:<\/p>\n

In Chandler Country<\/strong><\/p>\n

California night. The Devil’s wind,
\nthe Santa Ana, blows in from the east,
\nraging through the canyon like a drunk
\nscreaming in a bar.
\nThe air tastes like<\/span>
\na stubbed-out cigarette. But why complain?
\nThe weather’s fine as long as you don’t breathe.
\nJust lean back on the sweat-stained furniture,
\nlights turned out, windows shut against the storm,
\nand count your blessings.
\nAnother sleepless night,<\/span>
\nwhen every wrinkle in the bedsheet scratches
\nlike a dry razor on a sunburned cheek,
\nwhen every ten-year whiskey tastes like sand,
\nand quiet women in the kitchen run
\ntheir fingers on the edges of a knife
\nand eye their husbands’ necks. I wish them luck.<\/p>\n

Tonight it seems that if I took the coins
\nout of my pocket and tossed them in the air
\nthey’d stay a moment glistening like a net
\nslowly falling through dark water.
\nI remember<\/span>
\nthe headlights of the cars parked on the beach,
\nthe narrow beams dissolving on the dark
\nsurface of the lake, voices arguing
\nabout the forms, the crackling radio,
\nthe sheeted body lying on the sand,
\nthe trawling net still damp beside it. No,
\nshe wasn’t beautiful — but at that age
\nwhen youth itself becomes a kind of beauty —
\n“Taking good care of your clients, Marlowe?”<\/p>\n

Relentlessly the wind blows on. Next door
\ncatching a scent, the dogs begin to howl.
\nLean, furious, ray-eyed from the storm,
\npacks of coyotes come down from the hills
\nwhere there is nothing left to hunt.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(Dana Gioia, from Daily Horoscope<\/em>)<\/p>\n

A charming notion proposed\u00a0by “scientists” centuries ago was that of the luminiferous \u00e6ther<\/em>: a ubiquitous but invisible substance, not quite air and not quite liquid and lighter than both, which bore particles of light on their journeys through the atmosphere, through vessels and bodies of water, across the heavens.<\/p>\n

Alas, there is no luminiferous <\/em>\u00e6ther. Which doesn’t mean that the notion<\/em> of an \u00e6ther doesn’t live on — an \u00e6ther for the transmission of some<\/em> sense. Sound, say.<\/p>\n

That seems to have fueled the original name of the \u00e6therphone, a sort of electronic instrument. Nowadays, it’s more commonly known as the Theremin<\/a>, after its inventor Leon (or Lev) Theremin. From a wonderful article<\/a> at the Tux Deluxe site:<\/p>\n

Like the virtual air guitar, the aetherphone was a thing of magic and wonder, an instrument that was played without physical contact between the musician and the instrument, the electrical expression of constructivism, the art movement of the revolution. The aetherphone was patented in 1921, and was first demonstrated later that year at the 8th annual All-Russia Electrical Engineering Conference. In 1924, the invention is said to have been presented to Lenin — as a potential burglar alarm.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Basically, you’ve got two motion-detecting antennae, a vertical rod and a horizontal loop. You move your hands closer to or farther away from the antennae to produce eerie, warbling musical notes. For obvious reasons, Theremins most commonly appear on the soundtracks of science-fiction films. But I wanted to find a Theremin-rendered song which nearly every reader of RAMH<\/em> would instantly recognize, and here’s where I landed: “White Christmas,” performed by a Swedish, umm… a Swedish Thereminist, I guess, named Pekkanini<\/a>:<\/p>\n

<\/object><\/p>\n

By including this here and now, I in no way want you to think I approve of public Christmas-music performances before the US Thanksgiving holiday.<\/p>\n

__________________________<\/p>\n

<\/a>About the image which opens this post:<\/strong> although this seems to be a posed\/trick photograph — okay, it almost surely is<\/em> — it depicts something real, or real-ish anyhow. From an article in Romania Business Insider, where I found the photo:<\/p>\n

Sky Touring & Events will open the first sky restaurant in Bucharest this month, the company has announced without naming the location of the restaurant. The sky restaurant concept consists of a platform which hosts the restaurant table and which is raised 50 meters above ground. The Dinner in the Sky concept can host up to 22 people and three members of the staff.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

(For the metrically challenged, 50 meters translates to a little more than under 160 feet, i.e., somewhere between 15 and 20 stories. Twenty-two people, however, remain twenty-two people under any system of measurement.)<\/p>\n

Here’s a real picture of a real dinner\/meeting in the sky:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

The company<\/a> behind this also promotes “Showbizz in the Sky” (a pianist, for example, hanging in air alongside the dinner table) and “Marriage in the Sky” (for couples whose love knows no bounds, including the meteorological sort).<\/p>\n

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[For information about this image, see the note at the foot of this post.] From whiskey river: This is the Dream This is the dream we carry through the world that something fantastic will happen that it has to happen that time will open by itself that doors shall open by themselves that the heart […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","h5ap_radio_sources":[],"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"activitypub_content_warning":"","activitypub_content_visibility":"","activitypub_max_image_attachments":3,"activitypub_interaction_policy_quote":"anyone","activitypub_status":"","footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[247,1393,94,95,74,17,5,251],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-7948","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-ruminations","7":"category-whiskey-river-runningaftermyhat","8":"category-02_in-the-news","9":"category-science-medicine","10":"category-music","11":"category-04_technology","12":"category-06_writing","13":"category-poetry-writing_cat","14":"entry"},"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p6kZSG-24c","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7948","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7948"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7948\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7949,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7948\/revisions\/7949"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7948"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7948"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/johnesimpson.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7948"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}