Two worlds for the price of one

I think all artists – all people really – have to look at important things in life sideways. You can’t go directly at it, or you’ll miss something. It’s like looking to the side of faint stars in order to see them, instead of looking directly at them.

One of the things I believe, based on this kind of sideways observation, is that we live in multiple worlds at once and but may not accept it. We occupy a material world, eating mayonnaise sandwiches and tucking in our pot bellies on one hand – while longing in our souls for something that no one thing on earth will ever satisfy. For many, the sight of a harvest moon on a cold night makes us pant for something we cannot even name.

As one sage noted, we are caught halfway between beast and angel, and both states are always at play in us.
I have arrived at a strange peace concerning this dichotomy, and even believe there is no division at all between these two realms. Now, in our linear thinking, we say there is only what is apparent: The material world than we can see and touch and taste. We say that there is clearly a past, present and future. That the only correct view is the materialists’ view. Anything else, goes the implication, is a “supernatural” view, and consequently, subject to ridicule.

And yet…

Einstein might chuckle at this statement. He wrote that our distinction between the past, present and future was nothing but a stubbornly persistent illusion. That our categorically-bound world was one of hastily-erected cardboard boundaries, with no bearing at all on reality.

And then the other day, I heard a physicist speak on how the material world isn’t really what it appears to be. That piece of fire wood isn’t really solid, but a collection of atoms held together in a very magnetic way ­­- held in place by an odd and powerful force, which, if altered slightly, would radically change the composition of the physical object, and consequently alter the space and the objects surrounding it. Time, being related directly to space, would also be altered, if I understood correctly.

Some magic glue, not yet understood by science, holds all this together and any variation can cause particle/energy vibrations between the visible and invisible dimensions, causing some particles to temporarily disappear.

I am no scientist. In fact, I can hardly change an air conditioner filter, but I believe that the universe is far richer than we can intellectualize or corral into our theories.

Like that little piece of matter that darts between worlds, we occupy space on more than one level, and, as artists, we must ferret out all that exists around us, visible or not, linear or not.

That odd gap, I think, is the essential residence of the artist, and his job is to somehow be a bridge. And, then, if someone wants to portray us as nuts for talking of other realities, let him take it up with Einstein.

We’ve got worlds to explore.