“Whatever is beneath the earth change their forms, the earth and all that is within it.” Ovid - “Metamorphoses”
Rays of sunlight penetrate into the center and through all living things, through the skin into plant and animal cells shallow and deep, into cell nuclei, into the DNA, RNA and histone molecules where rays strike atoms, quarks, pi-mesons and higgs-bosuns making changes all along the way in and back out, changes manifest as organism growth, oxygen production and genetic revision. Speciation is a grand manifestation of the change wrought by solar and other cosmic radiation. DNA is revised by radiation. New strategies for life are tested in environments nano to macro. Environments change along with organisms. Everything on Earth and beyond at every level of the cosmic hierarchy is aswirl.
Human culture comprises myriad efforts to slow time in order to get a grip on rapid, relentless change. A story is an anchor for the vessel called humanity seeking a port in this galactic storm. Stories give form to the formless. The theories of Darwin, Marx, Freud and Einstein are such stories as are the work of Dickens, Dostoevsky and DeLillo. A story is a machine for seeing with. Every story is a theory - all theories are stories. Does it matter if they are “right” or “wrong”? They serve us during their time. A compelling theory may launch 1,000 useful ideas and be wrong at it’s core. A potent story spawns many new ideas, some endure longer than others. Generating stories is like throwing glitter on a wet dog - some is going to stick, most will end up on the floor.
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JB Questions and Observations:
- Storytellers in sequence: Carlyle-Ruskin-Morris-Wright-ecclesiastical to temporal intellectual passion i.e. Frank Lloyd Wright gets religion and spawns 20th century architecture - FLW was the ground zero story bricoleur transforming 18th century Scottish Presbyterian fervor into built form.
- Chaucer, Dante, Shakespeare and countless others borrowed heavily from Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” a cornucopia of deus ex machinae. Bloodiest book I ever read.
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5/17/2016 4:09 PM