Letter to Pete: Seasonal Layers of the Microcosmos

Hey!  You sent me this:

My Microcosmos question at the moment is - we have 'invisible seasons' or 'internal weather' - do we have external weather? It feels like we do but maybe it's invisible somehow - light or sound... I feel the Tao is going to be a rich area for us - I got out the Tao Te Ching but nothing quite fell into place....

And it got me thinking and looking back at some of the other things you insightfully wrote about this topic:

As our ideas about 'emotional weather' develop so it becomes easier to find ideas that work. Currently I think that there is a map for the entire microcosmos - the map covers both time and space - it maps the trajectories of the weather throughout the time period - so it will show how the 'weather' passes around the microcosmos, defining migrations of that weather. Perhaps certain sounds will be associated with certain emotions or perhaps specific musical ideas will have that function*

[*I want to go into this last sentence more, in a separate post, and am putting this note here to remind myself to do so and include my ideas on material and mood/meaning]

You also wrote:

I could see this tree soaking up the weather, nourished by the weather, shaped by the weather, beaten by the weather - but then I remembered something I had written and used many times: "we attach meaning to events, but events happen in the universe and meaning happens in the human heart" - suddenly the image of these individual static microcosms, their visual content unchanging but their sonic and light colouration changing - rang true - I suddenly felt the microcosmos was like looking at 100 people, or a million people - the physical appearance unchanging with each one, but the inner, unseen landscapes nourished and battered by 'invisible seasons'.

In a way the question of inner weather or outer weather is two sides of a coin, flipped by perspective—does the light/sound represent the inner world or the outer—It’s a choice, like heads or tails.

As I mull all this over, I feel the paradox of what you may be reaching for in your question—how does one make experiential an inner state and outer state simultaneously.  Are we expressing an inner weather or an external weather?  In a way it is both, depending on how the visitor perceives it (or is guided to perceive it)—is the sound/light representative of an inner voice of the object(s) or an outer force that the object(s) exists in.   Inner emotional weather, or outer worldly weather.  I see where you reached for the Tao, in that it speaks so much of that space in between that is not either thing and both things at once.  Not so unlike our own paradoxical puzzle….I think we are trying to speak of something that is two separate things, internal and external, while also pointing out the connecting sameness between both things; the implicit unity.

It has been a reoccurring thread emerging in my life lately that I am a microcosm for the world around me, and the world outside me is a macrocosm of my inner landscape.  I was describing it today as skiing.  Riding two parallel tracks—one my inner world, one the outer world—simultaneously, yet sometimes leaning onto one more than the other depending on my directional need, depending on where I’m trying to go or what I’m trying to understand.  Either way, they work in tandem.  I often find when I learn something about the nature of my inner world, it can be applied to the nature of the outer world, and vice versa. 

Circling back to the Microcosmos….Inner weather and outer weather, working in tandem.  Is it crazy (from a logistics standpoint) to be imaging within the Microcosmos small worlds/objects/groups of objects that have sound and light that come from within them, as well as there being sound and light that is external—in the space of the room and in the object(s).  Could the light and sound of the inner voice/weather be choreographed to make meaning and relation to the outer voice/weather? Almost like a conversation happening between the object and the room. The inner forces and outer forces in tandem.  Sometimes in harmony, sometimes perhaps dissonance; sometimes happening both at once, other times one alone.  Echoing each other’s sentiments, or arguing against them.  You wrote about exploring adding sound to static images—perhaps what I’m suggesting would be like the sound of two static images expressing themselves to one another.  Or in reaction to one another.  Perhaps this is close to what you are already imagining.

It’s hard to say, all that sound/light might be too chaotic.  I also often find that more is not necessarily better, and simple can be quite powerful.  Also, if we’re not careful this whole thing will be saccharine sweet, and we’ll have a cute one-liner about seasons.  Kinda like a Hallmark card (do you know what I mean when I say that?)  I’m made to think of this decoration my mother would put up every Christmas: little painted ceramic buildings make up a town around a ceramic pond with a mirror on top for ice; little people skate around the pond (by magnets) while a Christmas tune plays; the little houses are lit up from within by Christmas lights.   It’s all very quaint and kinda beautiful and mesmerized me as a kid.  But it had no depth.  No layers of meaning.  It was a one-liner, and a kitsch one at that.  I think we have the potential to make the Microcosmos multi-layered and meaningful, both intellectually and experientially.  Also think sometimes seeing what you don’t want to be like helps form what you do want to be like. 

So, in summary: Do we have internal weather/seasons—yes, I think that’s part of what is going to make this meaningful, to us as explorers and to visitors as experiencers.  The question is how do we represent this internal world (visuals, sound, light, suggestion). Do we have external weather—yes, I think so.  By default of creating landscapes (my sculptures) we will have either weather or geography (ie. a snowy tundra in the arctic may not look too different than the plains of the Midwest on a winters day).  So maybe part of the question is do we utilize sound/light in representing an external force, an internal force, or both? I see two scenarios—there is light and sound in the space and it represents inner or outer forces, depending on how we choose to perceive it and encourage others to perceive it (two sides same coin); or there is light and sound coming from the objects and from the space itself, each force—inner and outer—getting its own voice and light representation.