Vibrations Against The Air

Hi Elizabeth,

I'm just checking in to say hi. I hope all your projects are coming along well. I liked your new pics on Flickr. I always try to save some really good ones to post there myself, because the resolution is better than on FB. I sure hope to get out and do a hike pretty soon, but it's just been harder this year. But soon I will, and because we have had some rain (including the last two days), the trails and hillsides should look a lot different, much greener and with wildflowers and native plants.

I saw an excellent movie last night, "Love And Mercy", a biopic about Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys. In the movie, he is played by two actors - Paul Dano (when he is young and his star is rising) and John Cusack (when he is in his 50s). Both actors knock their roles out of the park, as does the rest of the cast. Even if you are not familiar with The Beach Boys music, the movie stands on it's own as the story of a musical genius struggling against schizophrenia while trying to get the music out of his head and onto tape, and in later life dealing with the controlling influence of a domineering psychiatrist. Really a great movie, one of the best depictions of a real life person I've ever seen put on film, and also as it shows how music was created in the studio, by Brian Wilson, who had a tough life but is still going today at 74 years old and has triumphed in the end, largely because of the woman who became his wife, who saved him from his tyrannical doctor. It's funny, because the name "The Beach Boys"  seems like it might not correlate with musical genius, but when you really listen to what they were doing, with the rhythms, melodies and criss-crossing harmonies, there is no doubt. God Bless Brian Wilson. :)

I saw your post with the amazing contraptions that look like living Miyazaki creatures. Wow! Imagine the dedication it took to put those together. It's not only an engineering feat by the artist, but also a probable knowledge, on his part, and a belief in, the type of higher mathematics I am trying to comprehend in Roger Penrose's "The Road To Reality", in which he explains (for those who understand "the language"), how things are measured against each other, and in congruence with each other.

The mathematics of curves, and spin, and geometry and torsion, would all play a part in building those "living creatures" that have no motorised power other than the wind and their own mechanical design. So the math comes down to creating a fantastic structure (with "legs" for motion), that will move forward when it interacts with a directional wind.

In reading the Penrose book, for me, I obviously have to just skip past almost all of the calculations, as would anybody who isn't a math major, and a top-level one at that. But when you just read the words of the book, you can understand it, somewhat, on an intuitive level.

I think that's what you have to have to create the living Miyazaki creatures out of plastic bottles and tubing. You have to have a high level understanding of the engineering that is involved.

But more importantly - probably much more, I think - you have to have an intuitive understanding of the Living Plastic Creatures themselves, and in that way, by first intuiting them, and then creating them and bringing them to life, the artist is doing something similar to what Brian Wilson did.

He is bringing The Wind, or the air, to life.

Pretty amazing.

Well, that's all I know for tonight. Good singing will be had in church tomorrow morn.

Goodnight, Sweet Baby. See you tomorrow.

I Love You.  xoxoxoxoxoxoxoxo  :):)