Lamb and Lion
Greetings,
Yesterday, as usual, was Pi day -- 3.14. And, as always, it is the birthday of Albert Einstein. The world I inhabit seems often made of convergences or nodes, in which tangential plot lines intersect. I made an art piece a month ago named "Einstein," which I chatted about in the last missive I sent to you folks, that used this name to describe a single shape that could completely cover a plane without a repeating pattern. The singular shape was dubbed "Einstein," which is German for "one stone." I happened to watch the film "Oppenheimer" prior to its winning Best Picture last Sunday night; and there he was in the film, all wild hair and soulful eyes, having furtive conversations with the film's protagonist. A little homework reveals that although the historically accurate and monumental letter sent to Roosevelt by Einstein warning of the Nazis' research into creating an atomic bomb, the man himself had minimal interaction with Oppenheimer's "Gadget" and his army of engineers and physicists in New Mexico. Einstein was a pacifist and did not want to build a bomb. Yet, as a genius, German and a Jew, he was convinced that if the Germans succeeded, they would use it.
In about three weeks, Vermont will experience a total solar eclipse. Einstein's theories regarding the bending of spacetime by the mass of celestial objects were developed by 1911, but his surge into the public's awareness and out of the academic sphere occurred on May 29th, 1919. A solar eclipse on that day was the experimental proof that his calculations concerning the lensing effect of light caused by the sun's mass were spot on. He was right. Three hundred years of Newtonian physics was replaced by a new model of the universe. Einstein became the first science celebrity, touring China, Japan, India, South America, and the United States. He received the Noble Prize in 1921. He became the face of a genius and his name entered the international lexicon. "Well, he's no Einstein," to this day, is a declarative statement.
Pi is an irrational number. It's a ratio. Its definition is a function, a precise description of how those numbers relate to these. It is about relationships. Albert Einstein's personal life was a drama of the highest order revealed by his collected letters. He had a child, outside of a marriage, who died young. He was married twice. He had multiple romantic relationships throughout his life. His son Eduard was schizophrenic and institutionalized for decades. He loved the violin and thought an alternate career could have been music. Although one of history's most famous Jewish men, he believed most strongly in the philosophy of Spinoza, a pantheist, and proclaimed he was a "deeply religious nonbeliever." He was mostly a vegetarian on ethical grounds. His closet was filled with nearly identical gray suits to save the fuss of deciding what to wear.
What does this have to do with the middle of March? Deeply rational and totally irrational. This is the nature of our existence. Perfect and perfectly a mess. Pi and the greatest mind of the millennium have had fabulous marketing and branding programs. But they are a function in their milieu. Brilliance is seen from particular angles. Sheen is a function of lighting and focus. When an eclipse swings through, darkness reveals the corona, the halo of light around the sun. Perfection revealed. Respect the mind of our greatest scientist, and respect his capacity to do his work amidst the trials of living. Math we didn't invent. We found it. Pi was and ever will be. Us? We are temporary animals. Do good things, my friends. Now is your chance.
And finally, perspective. That ring around the black circle of the eclipse is sublime, but if one zooms in it is utter havoc in real time, an inferno, a magnetic nuclear cataclysm of plasma unravelling, bursting forth and sucking back to the surface, the absolute definition of chaos. Looks great from here.
In like a lamb, out like a lion...
Buy art about light. It is the best.
Bruce Mac
