Ad Astra Per Aspera

I was talking to Ace the other day and without really meaning to, I kinda crystallized what I'm trying to do here. Here as in this particular blog, and here as in during my life and work. Kinda trippy stuff. All because I was defending myself from an in all likelihood imagined verbal assault on my value and worth. Because I blog... yeah... I'm still sorting it out myself. Anyhow, Ace said that he wouldn't want to have his thoughts on the internet, because someone might read them. I kinda see this kind of thing as a microcosm* of The Golden Record. In August and September 1977 respectively, NASA launched Voyager 2 and Voyager 1 (Yes, Voyager 2 was launched before Voyager 1). Each one has a 12-inch gold-plated copper disk with a greeting intended for any life form either Voyager might encounter. This (1977) state-of-the-art technology contains a number of sounds and images meant to portray earth and give anyone or anything that might find it an idea of where the machine containing it came from. Similarly purposed plaques were placed inside Pioneer 10 and 11, which were the first two human artifacts to escape the solar system. Each of these spacecraft had a scientific purpose, which throws off the allegory slightly. The idea behind the plaques and later The Golden Record, was to throw something of ourselves out as far as we can just in case maybe, someday, someone will find it and find something they can understand in it. Is it a little bit out there? Absolutely. But there isn't much that makes more sense to me than the drive to connect, to communicate, to reach out. Even if in forty thousand years by some strange turn of fate or physics, one of the Voyagers comes hurtling back to Earth in a twisted mass of flaming metal, there's still a time capsule in there that maybe someone will understand.

This is a present from a small, distant world,
a token of our sounds, our science, our images, our music,
our thoughts and our feelings.
We are attempting to survive our time so we may live into yours.

U.S. President Jimmy Carter

*for some reason, my favourite word lately

Sondheim, Uta, and Kurosawa
Sondheim- Stephen Sondheim, American composer and lyricist. Born March 22, 1930. Known for the lyrics to Leonard Bernstein's West Side Story, and composing the music for A Funny Thing Happened On The Way To The Forum. Also Sweeney Todd, Into The Woods, and A Little Night Music.
Uta- Uta Hagen, German-born American actor and acting teacher. June 12, 1919-January 14, 2004. Author of Respect for Acting and A Challenge for the Actor. Notable for training, among others: Matthew Broderick, Al Pacino, Whoopi Goldberg, Sigourney Weaver and Liza Minelli.
Kurosawa- Akira Kurosawa, Japanese filmmaker. March 23, 1910- September 6, 1998. Best-known works: Seven Samurai (七人の侍, Shichinin no samurai), Yojimbo (用心棒) aka The Bodyguard.

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Daydream Believer