Not Dead Yet

Not Dead Yet

By Peter James (excerpt)

You needed to know the right time and wrong time to buy in the icon’s cycle. Like all the fervent Gaia memorabilia collectors, Anna Galicia knew this only too well.

She sat in the gilded, white velour upholstered armchair that was an exact copy of one she had seen Gaia lounging back in, in a Hello! magazine feature on her Central Park West apartment. Anna had had the replica made by a firm in Brighton, so that she could lounge back exactly the same way Gaia did, unlit cigarette gripped louchely between her forefinger and middle finger. Sometimes, sitting in this chair, she could imagine she was in the Dakota building, and that her view was over Central Park. The same building where John Lennon had been shot dead.

Something had always excited her about stars who met violent death.

She took an imaginary drag on her cigarette then tapped the end in the ashtray enamelled with Gaia’s face. Saturday morning was her favorite tie of the week, with the whole weekend stretched out in front of her. A whole two days to spend indulgently immersed in her idol. And next week, oh God, she could barely contain her excitement. Next week, Gaia would be here, in Brighton.

In the local paper, the Argus, open in front of her, was a photograph of the tiny house in Whitehawk where Gaia was born. Of course she wasn’t called Gaia Lafayette then. She was Anna Mumby. But hey, Anna thought with a wry smile, who didn’t change their name?

Not Dead Yet. Photo by Elena

She carefully lifted her computer from her lap and set it on the floor, took a sip of her Gaia Save Exploited Lives medium roast coffee, stood up and walked over to the silver balloon, with the pink words Gaia Inner Secrets Tour, which had cost her sixty pounds, and which was floating on its string, just below the ceiling. It was starting to look a little wrinkled, and sagging. She tugged it down and lovingly gave it a long, steady top-up burst of helium from the cylinder she kept here for that purpose, and released it.

Then she set down, breathing in the smells of this room. The scents of cardboard, paper, vinyl and polish and the faint trace of Gaia Noon Romance fragrance that she sprayed daily, she picked up her laptop and returned to the eBay auction page she was on.

It was for a bottle of Gaia organic Pinot Noir, from her own Napa Valley vineyard, the label bearing her tiny Secret Fox logo, like all her merchandise, and personally signed. All proceeds of the original sale of this bottle, auctioned at a charity, had gone to support a school in Kenya called Stahere. Yet another example of what a wonderfully kind and human person Gaia was. It was being sold by a Gaia fan in the UK, who had outbid Anna three years ago when it had originally been auctioned on eBay. Another Gaia collector had told her confidentially, onn a Gaia chatroom site, that this collector had lost his job and needed to raise cash.

Anna didn’t have any of the Gaia Special Cuvée Pinot Noir wine. It was one of the glaring gaps in her collection. There were known to be only twelve bottles with signed labels in the whole world. At this moment her pockets were feeling deep. She would bid high on this. Oh yes! No one out there was going too beat her today. Let them try, she thought, darkly.

When she met Gaia next week it would be good to tell her about this bottle. Maybe she’d even take it with her and get her to initial the date on it!

No, not dead yet. Photo by Elena

Textures

Textures

Imagination, Illusions, Fantasies and Dreams

The true worth of our civilisation is not to be found in humans themselves, but in the colours and textures that come alive in others. And being an artist and psychologist I love bringing to life the colors and textures. If I wear a pair of shoes that I bought on a distant planet, it’s a way of bringing back to Earth my travels with me.

The importance of imagination has been underlined by important thinkers, and by history itself. Clearly, visual and other authoring arts seem impossible without the aforementioned human capability. Scientifically, psychologists would try to explain this characteristic, while neuroscientists would look at which brain areas and/or neural clusters become especially activated during the procedure. Nonetheless, despite supported as well as disproved, scientific theories, the following pictures aim at conveying some of the imagery related to these imagined worlds, regardless of underlying motivations and applicable methodological explanations.

Some pictures, images, graphics, drawings or whatever else refers to artful depictions. Bright colors and flowers used as inspiration.

In drawing, just as in animation, there often are primary and secondary characters, as well as action and scenes (alternatively plot and subplot). Of course, there are also backgrounds. Backgrounds, as well as materials in design, are sometimes referred to as patterns, textures or prints. The images below function as a demonstration. They also portray some hypothetical astrophysical arrangements.

The World in Red. Illustration by Elena

Battleship Galactica. And why not?A gyrating, animated sphere as an abstract, psychedelic art. Illustration by Elena

Stars in the Sky: While stargazing is among the most ancient hobbies, amateur and professional astronomers, and other observers of stellar bodies, remain numerous. Illustration by Elena

The interplay of lighting and shading create illusions of perception. Illustration by Elena

The brick-wall inspired design. Illustration by Elena

Three stones. Illustration by Elena

Artsee. Illustration by Elena

Our universe. Illustration by Elena

Cosmos Is Made Out of Chaos

Cosmos Is Made Out of Chaos

A revolution made Cosmos out of Chaos For thousands of years humans were oppressed – as some of us still are – by the notion that the universe is a marionette whose strings are pulled by a god or gods, unseen and inscrutable. Then, 2,500 years ago, there was a glorious awakening in Ionia : on Samos and the other nearby Greek colonies that grew up among the islands and inlets of the busy eastern Aegean Sea (as an aid to confusion, Ionia is not in the Ionian Sea; it was named by colonists from the coast of Ionian Sea).

We know that the early Greeks had believed that the first being was Chaos, corresponding to the phrase in Genesis in the same context, “without form”. Chaos created and then mated with a goddess called Night, and their offspring eventually produced all the gods and men. A universe created from Chaos was in perfect keeping with the Greek belief in an unpredictable Nature run by capricious gods.

An endless cycle of deaths and rebirths, of souls and universes, in which nothing fundamentally new can happen. Source : © Megan Jorgensen (Elena)

But in the sixth century B.C., in Ionia, a new concept developed, one of the great ideas of the human species. The universe is knowable, the ancient Ionians argued, because it exhibits an internal order: there are regularities in Nature that permit its secrets to be uncovered. Nature is not entirely unpredictable, there are rules even she must obey. This ordered and admirable character of the universe was called Cosmos.

But why Ionia, why in these unassuming and pastoral landscapes, these remote islands and inlets of the Eastern Mediterranean? Why not in the great cities of India or Egypt, Babylonia, China or Mesoamerica? China had an astronomical tradition millennia old; it invented paper and printing, rockets, clocks, silk, porcelain, ocean-going navies. Some historians argue it was nevertheless too traditionalist a society, too unwilling to adopt innovations.

Why not India, an extremely rich, mathematically gifted culture? Because, some historians maintain, of a rigid fascination with the idea of an infinitely old universe condemned to an endless cycle of deaths and rebirths, of souls and universes, in which nothing fundamentally new could happen.

Why not Mayan and Aztec societies, which were accomplished in astronomy and captivated, as the Indians were, by large numbers? Because, some historians declare, they lacked the aptitude or impetus for mechanical invention. The Mayans and the Aztecs did not even – except for children’s toys – invent the wheel.

Ionia

Ionia

The Ionians had several advantages. Ionia is an island realm. Isolation, even if incomplete, breeds diversity. With many different islands, there was a variety of political systems. No single concentration of power could enforce social and intellectual conformity in all the islands. Free inquiry became possible. The promotion of superstition was not considered a political necessity. Unlike many other cultures, the Ionians were at the crossroads of civilizations, not at one of the centers.

In Ionia, the Phoenician alphabet was first adapted to Greek usage and widespread literacy became possible. Writing was no longer a monopoly of the priests and scribes. The thoughts of many were available for consideration and debate. Political power was in the hands of the merchants, who actively promoted the technology on which their prosperity depended.

It was in the Eastern Mediterranean that African, Asian, and European civilizations, including the great cultures of Egypt and Mesopotamia, met and cross-fertilized in a vigorous and heady confrontation of prejudices, ideas, languages and gods.

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? Image © Megan (Elena).

What do you do when you are faced with several different gods each claiming the same territory? The Babylonian Marduk and the Greek Zeus was each considered master of the sky and king of the gods. You might decide that Marduk and Zeus were really the same. You might also decide, since they had quite different attributes, that one of them was merely invented by the priests. But if one, why not both?

And so it was that the great idea arose, the realization that there might be a way to know the world without the god hypothesis; that there might be principles, forces, laws of nature, through which the world could be understood without attributing the fall of every sparrow to be the direct intervention of Zeus.

China and India and Mesoamerica would have tumbled to science too, if only they had been given a little more time. Cultures do not develop with identical rhythms or evolve in lockstep. They arise at different times and progress at different rates. The scientific world view works so well, explains so much and resonates so harmoniously with the most advanced parts of our brains that in time, virtually every culture on the Earth, left to its own devices, would have discovered science. Some culture had to be first. As it turned out, Ionia was the place where science was born.

Ionia, the place where science was born. Illustration by Elena.

Revolution of the Hand

Revolution of the Hand

Between 600 and 400 B.C., a great revolution in human thought began. The key to the revolution was the hand. Some of the brilliant Ionian thinkers were the sons of sailors and farmers and weavers. They were accustomed to poking and fixing, unlike the priests and scribes of other nations, who, raised in luxury, were reluctant to dirty their hands.

These scientists rejected superstition, and they worked wonders. In many cases we have only fragmentary or second-hand accounts of what happened. The metaphors used then may be obscure to us now. There was almost certainly a conscious effort a few centuries later to suppress the new insights. The leading figures in this revolution were men with Greek names, largely unfamiliar to us today, but the truest pioneers in the development of our civilisation and our humanity.

We have always attempted to understand the world without invoking the intervention of the gods, but we have always failed. Image: © The Cosmic Shore by Megan Jorgensen

The first Ionian scientist was Thales of Miletus, a city in Asia across a narrow channel of water from the island of Samos. He had traveled in Egypt and was conversant with the knowledge of Babylon. It is said the he predicted a solar eclipse. He learned how to measure the height of a pyramid from the length of its shadow and the angle of the Sun above the horizon, a method employed today to determine the heights of the mountains of the Moon. He was the first to prove geometric theorems of the sort codified by Euclid three centuries later – for example, the proposition that the angles at the base of an isosceles triangle are equal. There is a clear continuity of intellectual effort from Thales to Euclid to Isaac Newton’s purchase of the Elements of Geometry at Stourbridge Fair in 1663, the vent that precipitated modern science and technology.

Thales attempted to understand the world without invoking the intervention of the gods. Like the Babylonians, he believed the world to have once been water. To explain the dry land, the Babylonians added that Marduk had placed a mat on the face of the waters and piled dirt upon it (There is some evidence that the antecedent, early Sumerian creation myths were largely naturalistic explanations, later codified around 1000 B.C. in the Enuma elish (When on high), the first words of the poem; but by then the gods had replaced Nature, and the myths offers a theogony, not a cosmogony. The Enuma elish is reminiscent of the Japanese and Ainu myths in which an originally muddy cosmos is beaten by the wings of a bird, separating the land from the water. A Fijian creation myth says: “Rokomautu created the land. He scooped it up out of the bottom of the ocean inn great handfuls and accumulated it in piles here and there. These are the Fiji Islands”. The distillation of land from water is a natural enough idea for island and seafaring peoples.