The Brink

Hey distant but close friends,

The gravity of our days is fierce and has been somewhat paralyzing considering what may come, but I still would like to share, and have you share as well. Stories help.

Last summer was a challenging time for me, which in retrospect, falls into that perspective that is always impossible when one is standing knee deep in rising waters. My life was going either in one direction or another. That's it. Two roads diverged and both were fraught with unknowns that at the time were somewhat terrifying. Being as sensitive as I am... sleepless nights were common. As is often the case for me, all this manifests in my artwork. I made a panel called "The Brink." It's large, nearly four feet by eight feet and tremendously complex, as you can tell by the detail images that follow.

There stands, just right of center, a lookout tower under a shower of iridescent rain. It is anthropomorphized architecture--a person--with the windows for observation at the top, exactly the way our eyes are placed on our bodies. Left of center is the Orb, the ball of energy, with which, on so many days, we find ourselves having a mandatory staring match. Is it finances? Is it your relationship? An addiction, a worry over the kids, aging parents, the small but insistent fretting, house paint, car repair, knee pain, gaining weight, losing weight, tuition, is my job secure, should I finally call, am I the person I know that I can truly be before the lights go out... ??

There's a garden, full of spiked geometry and blossoms. There's a wandering cloud, an EKG, ripples on the water, a sunrise, the wind, rain, the moon, the house in the distance, a pyramid small - that upon inspection becomes enormous, encasing the three-dimensional schematic for the time machine that might be the best answer. There's the void. There's the far distant teeny, tiny tower reminding you that you are not alone in the staring match. Layers and layers... the void. Our planet from space... The horizontal broad beam of light holding up the tower...

Yep. That is all in there and a single paragraph doesn't begin to explain what is what, but...

My path emerged. I made some choices and life is better. No one bought "The Brink." Then came the political explosion of the impeachment inquiry. Is this the collapse of our democracy? A tyrant or just a careless man in power? Immigration. Election interference. Greed. Lies. The Brink! And the country survived. (For now).

And now. The Brink! The entire world upended and so many of our assumptions of normal destroyed. The abyss of tomorrow or next week or next month. The Orb of energy looks suspiciously like the sphere of a virus, dark and menacing. The energy ball of focus and its streaming wind of airborne broken glass cannot be willed away. It's huge. And close.

Is this art piece some talisman of prescience? Well, yes. It is. My unconscious made this metaphor last summer that on this very day rings bright and loud. It's a scary world we find ourselves facing but, and this is the moment of salvation, there is always the energy ball. That short list of worries above never goes away. It's an endless list and terrifying to stare at. Some of us will make it through this alive. For a while. With hope, a long while. Some won't. That's how this works. What seemed the brink before was and then wasn't. And then was again and then wasn't. And now...

On the panel protecting the tower/me/us is a force field. Almost nothing gets through and what little does, there is a wall of massive organic complexity perfectly engineered to handle it. The concept of a force field of protection will be the subject of my next missive. Please stay tuned. I have been fascinated since childhood by the notion of a field of visible or invisible power that protects us, can shield us from ray guns, catapults, destructor beams, meanies, orcs... Sometimes it's blue and sparkly, depending on which movie you are watching or the book in your hands. I am hard at work in the studio making force fields for all of you people. You can buy one to protect your family. But these are my metaphors. The real Force Field is us. Today I am surrounded by people, (ok, they are standing over there, close, but not too close) who are the reason we will get through all this. The strength of us all together is it. Yes, this is the BRINK. We will look different after and there will be another brink, but the force of us together is how we will prevail. My energy field is yours to use. We got this. There are too many brilliant, dedicated, caring-beyond-reason humans who truly are the Jedi among us. Nobility is in our DNA. Do your best. Stay safe. Send love every day. Support those who need it. We all need it...

And btw, somebody please buy "The Brink" as my two Spring shows in NYC didn't happen. Make me an offer with what might work for you and we'll see if it works for me. My summer show in Seattle probably won't fly either. Support the arts. Now. Making metaphors helps. Crazy huh? Who knew. Can't make this up...

More love every day,

Bruce Mac

P.S. My personal brink of last summer means I now have a partner in my life. She's awesome. I'm lucky.

Which Watch When

Let's start with a couple of basic questions regarding value. First, how many days is a million seconds? How about a billion seconds? Next, what does the Mona Lisa weigh? If you wanted a stainless wristwatch for scuba diving in 1974, what would you buy? How about a sports car in 1969 if you were looking to spend under $3,000?

I have a piece of art for sale that is 22 1/2 inches square in my gallery. It's $1,200. A moderately well-known artist named Jack sold a piece exactly these dimensions in 1950 for $306. In 2006, a piece of this artist's work around 4 feet by 8 feet traded hands for about $30,000 per square inch. I have a 4 foot by 8 foot piece for sale here in the gallery. It's not $140 million dollars. He sold canvasses splattered with paint. I scratch metal really carefully. He's a genius. I'm just me.

What is anything worth? Exactly what someone is willing to pay for it. Mr. Pollock's art is all one-of-a-kind, like mine, but Ferrari made three dozen 250 GTO's between 1962 and 1964. They cost around $18,000 when new, but one sold for $2,500 in 1969. You know, used car. One was donated to a high school in Texas and they auctioned it for $7,000. In 2018, one sold for $70 million to the guy who started a company making excellent floor mats for cars. I have them--heavy-duty plastic and perfectly fitted and reasonably priced. He makes millions of them and millions.

An artist named David Choe painted graffiti murals at the headquarters of a start-up tech company in California, and he took shares in the company in lieu of cash. When Facebook went public his shares were worth around $200 million. Good call there David.

People constantly ask me at shows, "How much does it weight?" and "How long did it take you to make?" I have a piece here in the studio right now called "Solid State" that weighs 18 pounds, just like the Mona Lisa. Mine's newer, less well-known. So what things are worth is a function of age, notoriety, weight, rarity... A diamond was found last year the size of a baseball that weighs about 3/4 of a pound. What's it worth? Whatever you can get. The luxury company Louis Vuitton owns 25% of it and plans to send it on a world promotional tour. Diamonds are roughly 1 to 3.5 billion years old. Check the box for age and the box for how long did it take to make and the box for scarcity. Add marketing. A backstory helps: Rockefeller bought the Pollock painting for 300 bucks; the GTOs won a ton of races. Throw in the factor of good condition--is something in great shape? The watch mentioned above was bought in 1974 for $345 and the owner thought it was too nice to wear, so he left it in a lock box. Turns out it's now worth around $700,000 since it is pristine. Backstory? Paul Newman wore that model Rolex in a movie. I have a piece I just finished. It's in flawless condition and so special only two people have seen it, so far... What's it worth? Make me an offer. It's called "Box Lightning". Someday it will hang in a museum. For now, your house will do. All collections start with one piece. Every one. Ask any collector.

So, wrapping up: Age, scarcity, hoopla, weight, provenance, size, obvious genius and dumb luck are all factors, in no particular order. Quite often we value what others value--sparkly rocks, machinery, colored goo on canvas...What is the value of anything? What is the value of waking up in the morning not in pain? How about the last White Rhino? Grandkids? Priceless. But as far as "things" go--invest in what makes you smile. Take chances. There are sneaker collections worth millions. Matchbox cars. Baseball cards, omg. Then, patience. Days and days and years of smiles.

Oh, a million seconds is 11 and a half days. A billion is 31 and a half years.

Find what makes you smile and head that direction...

And, of course, take care of each other. And, support the arts. Today.

Peace and love as always, Bruce

Dark then Light, Rhythm in Hues

What could be the furthest thing from your mind right now? Here's a guessing game:

What can regenerate a detached limb? What has three hearts? What grows from the size of a grain of rice to the weight of a man in three years? What can taste with its skin, has copper-based blue blood, and is happy at 47 degrees Fahrenheit? What has excellent vision, with horizontal, dumbbell-shaped  pupils, and can also "see" with its skin? Some are bioluminescent. What first left the family tree of humans a half a billion years ago? One can walk carrying coconuts. Some, when pissed off, turn bright red and raise horns above their eyes. Got it yet? What has two-thirds of its neurons outside of its brain? What can change the texture and the color of its exterior at will to be indistinguishable from its surroundings, or mimic a mass of predators or a rock, or simply pulse rhythmic color?

21/Borisov is an interstellar visitor flying in a hyperbolic trajectory around our sun right now, only the second object from outside our solar system we have seen. It looks like a comet but it came from outside our small(ish) neighborhood. I imagine that at the controls of that spacecraft, it it were one, there might be something like the above being. You could hardly devise a stranger creature if you tried. No bones. Can fit a 100-pound body through a hole the size of an orange. All of them have a toxin that is delivered through saliva; one is poisonous enough to kill a person. They can bore a hole the size of a large needle through calcium carbonate with a tiny abrasive tongue and then inject this venom to kill its dinner.  Most have a complete lifespan of six months but the largest live up to five years or so. Hawaiian folklore believes these to be the lone survivors of another age of the universe. They breathe water but can absorb up to 40% of their required oxygen through their skin. They don't have ears but they can hear. They make ink but don't have pens.

The solstice is in two days, making today's day here in Vermont only eight hours and fifty minutes. Eight. Like the arms on an octopus. Am I alone in making this connection? Yep. Pretty much. But it's ok; I'm used to having things connect in my tiny brain that no one else connects. In fact, it's part of my job. Do something no one has ever done before. My art is exactly this. Make people use their eyes like they never have before. Ask people to consider how truly bizarre our world can be. Is it coincidental that a Hawaiian observatory crew found the first interstellar object, dubbed Oumuamua, which I wrote about back in December 2017 (Current Thinking link) AND the octopus is revered in Hawaiian folklore as the symbol of Kanaloa, the spiritual leader of the underworld. Kanaloa is associated with intelligence, flexibility, and, he is the navigator. There it is. The aliens that live on earth left over from a previous universe are probably the navigators of these interstellar objects (spaceships).  Makes total sense...

Or not. If you are still with me... 

Happy solstice, dear friends. Happy holidays. Light the candles. Trim the tree. Hug your assembled family. Have a feast. Invite the neighbors. Dream your wildest dreams through the longest night this year. Call me and buy art heirlooms as gifts. (My gallery director requires that sentence). Mostly, greet each day as the miracle that we get once again. They are numbered. All are precious. And share your blessings just a little bit extra around this pivot toward brighter days. Two arms we have to hug everyone we love. Giant Pacific octopuses have suckers that can lift 30 pounds and they have 1,600 of them on their eight arms. Don't hug them.

Peace and good will. Repeat...

but mostly love and more love...

H E X

A hex is a spell usually meant to curse someone or something. This piece, "Hex", is based on the panels placed on barns, starting in the early 19th Century in the Pennsylvania Dutch countryside, to ward off evil and invite prosperity on the farm. The word itself is from German referring to casting a spell, but I like the notion of both meanings. A word that means both itself and the opposite of itself has been a fascination of mine for years. "Sanction" means to say it's ok to do something. AND it means that nobody can do the thing. "Dust" means to remove dust or it means to cover something, like "dusting" the cookies with sugar. "Cleave" means to cut AND it means to hold fast to something. Divide and not divide. "Overlook" means to have missed something AND it means to look over something to be sure nothing is missed. Language is so slippery. Makes me crazy. "Hex" is both the spell and the thing to ward off evil in your space. (The patterns on the metal are based on the precise mapping with 3D laser scanning technology of the energy fields surrounding pyramids recently discovered buried in South American jungles. Pretty sure. Maybe...). Around 2005, I did a piece called "Angor Wat" that referenced this same energy mapping of the massive temple in Cambodia. For millennia, this religious monument, the largest on earth, was the spiritual center for countless believers. Seemed to me that a satellite view would be helpful as none of those people ever saw it from above. Uluru, the sacred sandstone mountain of the Pitjantjatjara aboriginals in Australia, was just closed this last week to tourists wanting to trek to its summit. I made an art piece in 2003 named "Uluru" to celebrate its stark magnificence and spiritual potency. The strand between these art pieces is the energy within objects. Painted, constructed, or naturally occurring, we humans endow things with power. Or maybe they have power that we perceive. Either way, "Hex" is part of this continuum--the overview of the invisible energy. And, by the way, "strand" is one of those contronyms, as a verb and then a noun.

P.S. Send me your favorite contronyms if you have any. If not, let's all agree that language is whack. AND, look around for objects with energy... those are my specialty.

I Like it Here

OK, wade right in. 29% of the birds in North America have disappeared in my lifetime. That's around 3 billion birds. July 2019 was the hottest month in human history. New estimates show that at current levels of production, by 2050 there will be more plastics in the ocean, by mass, than fish. People in positions of power and wealth to effect the necessary revolution don't seem to care. Hell, I have heard, is really hot too. It's over for our children. We are doomed. Let's race cars and buy crap.

But,

Wait a minute. I'm sorry. Here's what we know:

The diameter of the Earth is 7,917.5 miles. Yaks and their shepherds live at around 16,000 feet. The Small Himalayan Jumping Spider, who makes his little snug hut/web at 22,000 feet, is the highest living critter we know about. (This fact bugs me a bit since spiders are all carnivores, so what are they eating up there?!) The Bar-headed Goose migrates over the Himalayan Plateau and has been confirmed flying over Mount Makalu at 27,825 feet. Upper atmospheric sampling has found bacteria living from 5-10 miles above sea level. Speaking of seas, the Mariana Snailfish was found living at just over 5 miles down. I don't really want to know what they eat. Ice cold debris descending from the pitch blackness?!

A quick bit of math shows us that life as we know it lives in a layer that is 10 miles thick, maybe 15 if we add those upper atmosphere molds and bacteria. This is a very, very, very thin film. Relative to the Earth, all life lives on only about .189% of the planet and that's a figure based on distance as opposed to mass.

Right now, utilizing the Hubble Space telescope, the farthest we can see visible light is from a galaxy we named GN-z11 that is 32-billion light years from Earth. Hubble has also established the observable universe, using all frequencies of radiation, to be about 46.5-billion light years in all directions, or roughly a sphere with us in the middle that has a diameter of about 93-billion light years. That is what we know. That is as far as humans can SEE and that is how our giant brains do the math and physics and determine the size to the very edge of everything. And as awesome as this vision is, as sophisticated as our sensors and computational analytical skills get, we have not found ANY evidence of other life ANYWHERE.

Ok. All life that exists is the thinnest film of green scum right here. All life. Every last bit. Just the merest wall of a bubble, a layer of almost nothingness, relative to the planet AND  the great beyond. This little film is all the life in the universe that we know about for real. As the atmosphere around us, and the oceans and weather and land changes, life will adapt, or die. Extinction events have happened repeatedly, just none involving us.

But, I believe in our humanity and the power in these massive brains. If we can detect a bee on the moon by its heat signature, we can do this. If we can bring back the bald eagle, we can do this. If we can build a Hubble and tune it repeatedly, we can do this. I recently read a sign held aloft by a school kid saying, "It's too bad we don't have an unlimited source of energy floating across the sky everyday." We can fix this plastic tsunami. We can make food for everyone. Tasty food. In my next blog thingy, I will explain how. Maybe. Probably... In the meantime, I would like a little help from you guys to spread the word.

Save the Thin Film and Maybe our Kids' Kids.

Catchy right?

Thursday and the Tsunami

Howdy good friends,

The license plate on my car says "QUASAR". When asked, I always explain: "It's a mysterious, deep space object emitting massive amounts of energy." They are, in fact, super luminous galaxy cores whose light typically started traveling billions of years ago. Their emissions are across the entire spectrum of radiation. The crush of annihilation into a black hole spins out particles--death of matter, creation of energy. How super luminous? These are tsunamis of cosmic energy--charged particles moving in waves 99.9999999999999999999999 % the speed of light, just a smidgeon below warp speed. Without our cozy blanket of of magnetism and atmosphere we would all be cooked.

But, it's Thursday. I'm willing to bet you didn't wake up this morning thinking about galactic cores. Or that today--Thor's Day--is named after the Norse god of thunder, at least in English. In the Romance languages, today is named for Jupiter, the god of the sky and thunder. In Latin, today is Jovis Dies, Jupiter's Day. Spanish say "Jueves." French, "Juedi." Strangely, or not, depending on how you think the mind of man is collectively wired, Danish, Dutch, Slavic, the languages of India, Nepali, Thai, even some Meso-American languages have the god of the sky and thunder as this day of the week. Tezcatlipoca is the god who is best understood, according to the smart humans focusing on this heritage, as the embodiment of change through conflict. Thunder is most certainly conflict. The god with the giant hammer is certainly trying to change something. Every week.

This morning I was running and saw two birds harassing each other next to the trail. After I got home and did the homework, I identified them as Black-billed Magpies. Big, sporting a striking black and white outfit with a slight iridescence, these guys were really having a problem together. What could be the issue? Apparently these are among the smartest birds on the planet. I'm a bit of a bird freak. They are the only living descendants of dinosaurs. Couple that with the notion they can fly and we have surrounding us ancient animals with super powers. Why were these two having a battle on such a lovely morning?

From some reading recently are a couple stories that stitch this together. First, a monk asked his class, "What is the pitcher on the table?" One student began to speak about the pottery and its function. He was waved off. Another came to the front of the class and knocked the pitcher to the floor, shattering it completely. A smile. Class over. In another class, the teacher began to speak about the nature of all things and a bird began singing by the window. The monk went silent, waited till the bird finished his song and flew off. The monk smiled. Class over.

Conflict and change are the natural order of all things. From the searing radiation bathing the universe to the birds on the morning run on a Thursday, the nature of all things is temporal, temporary, push and pull. Life is defined by our response to this reality, and, if I can express this with even more focus--there is a duality to beauty. A thing--the sunset, a painting on the wall, a favorite song is a beautiful thing that comes and goes. A feeling--the sight of your child, a kiss, the endorphin rush of a hard run, is a thing of beauty that is profound and fleeting. But this duality is an illusion. Both of these, the outside experience and the inner emotion are within your head. Shakespeare said, "There is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so."

Change, the destruction of things, the sun sinking away, the passing bird song... is the nature of every day. Our defining of this day is how we roll with these infinite inputs. Loss. Yep. Conflict. Always. Music, as much as possible. Every Thor's Day, I consider the smiting hammer. My license plate is the cosmic surf reminder. Between the swells, I try to make beautiful things that will outlast me and share them as much as possible. "Keep on Growing," sang Trey Anastasio and The Tedeschi Trucks Band this past Saturday night at the Lockn' Music Festival. Go look that up if you are a Clapton or Duane Allman fan. Most importantly, see the broken pitcher as the nature of all things. But, listen to the singing bird.

Hugs help too, don't forget. Hugs are both inner and outer beauty. 

Forty Times a Second is Just Right

It was Pi Day, March 14th, Einstein's birthday, and I was reading about how a new computer program had figured out Pi to five trillion digits and I was thinking, "So what... Why do humans need to know this stuff? Can't we just accept that it doesn't repeat or end? It's just a ratio." A few days later, I was tv shopping and ran smack into the new 4K resolution benchmark for the "best" new tvs. You mean my "old" tv with the 1080p hi-def screen is now four times not as good as the new ones? Feels suddenly ancient, doesn't have enough dots. Pixels. Little colored bits... Guess I need more tiny flashing blips of color... Maybe 8 million will be enough...

In Warrnambool, Australia, some researchers have just discovered "middens,” which are charred remains of possible human settlements that date from 120,000 years ago, effectively doubling the age that has been the accepted figure for humans being on that continent. North of there, in the Pilbara region, are rock paintings that are conclusively dated to 40,000 years ago, making them the oldest art pieces on the planet. To this day, Aboriginal artists make imagery of the creation of the cosmos, art rooted in dreamings, the "Dreamtime," when the spirit/hero/wanderers traveled across the formlessness. The tradition of these paintings and carvings manifests the energy of "dreaming," the energy of an individual that existed before birth and continues after death. We are all of our ancestors as we are of ourselves, moment to moment, inseparable from our place and our time, yet bound to the continuum. The art from this tradition spans at least forty millennia and is overwhelmingly characterized by dot patterns. Thought, spirit, the cosmos is organized, rhythmic, small blips of color. (I highly recommend a book called, "Dreamings, the Art of Aboriginal Australia," published in 1988).

In 2015, Dr Li-Huei Tsai at MIT made the first mouse disco. The mice invited to the strobe-lit box for an hour every day were genetically engineered to have Alzheimer's disease. After a few (sq)weeks of getting down with their bad selves on the maze floor, the dissected mice showed significantly lower levels of two different brain proteins that form the plaque characterizing the disease. Cells called "microglia," debris clearing and cleaning cells, were stimulated by the light pulses, which seemed to be most effective strobing at a frequency of 40 times a second (40 hertz). This is the first proven cellular response to manipulated brain waves. Further, when sound at this same frequency was added to the treatment, it significantly improved function in other parts of the brain--the hippocampus, which is used for memory formation, storage and retrieval, and the pre-frontal cortex, which is the seat of judgement, attention, and higher-order reasoning. (I need this for sure).

 Researchers have discovered the firings of neurons in the brain work rhythmically. Gamma waves sweep through the brain at 25 to 140 hertz during peak concentration. (That's networks of neurons firing 140 times a second, just to be clear). Deep delta wave sleep is .5 to 4 hertz. Meditative adults have theta waves around 4 to 8 hertz. Dr. Tsai has formed a company, Cognito Therapeutics, using gamma wave entrainment to potentially alter the course of Parkinson's, Alzheimer's and other neurological disabilities faced by an aging global population. Therapy without drugs is a paradigm shift of massive scale.

The didgeridoo originated in northern Australia and is believed to be the oldest surviving instrument. Cave paintings show it being played 3,000-4,000 years ago and anthropologists suggest it may be as old as the 40,000-year culture to which it is attached. The strongest frequencies played are in the 40 to 200 hertz range, although many have infra-sonic waves below the 20 hertz threshold of common human hearing. Anyone who has listened to a group of didgeridoo players can attest to the sound as being frequencies you feel and hear, as well as being sound from a different time. Primitive music, absolutely. Gamma wave entrainment? Maybe.

Did the Aboriginals figure out how to have healthy brains? Maybe. Will I buy the 8 million pixels so my mythological beings in the movies are really contrasty? Maybe. Should teenagers be allowed to pump 40 hertz into their ear canals? Maybe. Maybe I need more music and sparkly lights for my brain fitness. Maybe all these light manipulations I play with every day will let me live as long as my kids. Add music and that sounds like a grand plan.

Rock steady, and I mean steady, my friends. Apparently, it's really, really important.  

And buy art. That way, in 40,000 years, people will recognize my initials and know you had great taste.

And, as always, before time and after, while the petroglyphs fade and before this walkabout we call life ceases, love love, everyday....

We don't repeat and we don't end either. Like Pi. Yep.

Bruce

Synchronicity and the Glint of Two Lights

Here's a quote some of you of a certain age or bent mind should recognize:

"A lot of people don't realize what's really going on. They view life as a bunch of unconnected incidents and things. They don't realize that there's this, like, lattice of coincidence that lays on top of everything. Give you an example, show you what I mean: suppose you're thinkin' about a plate of shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, "plate," or "shrimp," or "plate of shrimp" out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconsciousness."

Over the holidays I was in a bookstore doing last minute Christmas shopping and an Edward Hopper book caught my eye. I pulled it down and flipped it open to this page:

Bingo. Two Lights! I had to snap a pic with my phone because of the randomness of the moment. I have a client in Maine whose house has a view of the Two Lights lighthouse in Cape Elizabeth; we have been discussing, for some time, an art piece to speak to the place and the light and the history. He once was walking years ago and met a very old neighbor who actually remembers Hopper sitting and painting Two Lights right there next to his property.

Back to the holidays: less than 24 hours later, I went to see the movie "Aquaman" with my son. It's a DC comic come to life in epic scale and BOOM! there is Two Lights. It's the house where Aquaman grows up. His dad is the lighthouse keeper. Same same from the Hopper painting, complete with the golden light. Bizarre. I thought, "I need to mention this to Tom in Maine."

The next evening I was watching another superhero movie on the tube with my boys. "Ant Man and the Wasp" is a Marvel comics epic special-effects mashup involving interdimensional travel using a massive machine with steam punk details and space ship vibes. Right there in the middle of the movie is the machinery for shrinking and transporting, and the primary element of the machine looks exactly like the Two Lights lens-- a complex, highly engineered, cylindrical construction of glass and brass that weighs nearly a ton. The actual lens was commissioned in 1874 and shone for 120 years before being upgraded to a modern beacon. Then Antman's girlfriend's genius scientist dad bought it?!

Plate of shrimp effect EXACTLY.  What is the universe doing to smash a lighthouse into my reality with such emphasis? Three times in two days? True, "Light House" is kind of where I live metaphorically but... Come on...

I'm sitting here writing this in the studio, music playing, and in the background are the lyrics:

"Everything that falls your way, I say There is a deeper world than this that you don't understand There is a deeper world than this tugging at your hand Every ripple on the ocean Every leaf on every tree Every sand dune in the desert Every power we never see There is a deeper wave than this, swelling in the world...”

Can't make this stuff up. Sting is singing. I am scribbling. I was planning to write about quantum entanglement to sew this together, but it's stitched. Tight.

That quote that starts us off is from the 1984 movie "Repo Man."

Be sure to listen to "The Seventh Wave."

And stay tuned for how this all shows up in my art. It always does. Love love. After all, it's the seventh wave.

"At the still point of destruction At the centre of the fury All the angels, all the devils All around us, can't you see? There is a deeper wave than this rising in the land There is a deeper wave than this nothing will withstand."

Love is the seventh wave, but it's up to us to see it, make it real. All together now,

Bruce R. MacDonald

P.S. Coincidence--(n.) a remarkable concurrence of events or circumstances without apparent causal connection. "Life"— See above--"lattice of... "

The Force and Cookies

"In the old time” is how the story starts. The indigenous people of North America of the Algonquin tribe have a tale of three brothers who went hunting in early winter. They set out, found the trail of a bear and made chase. When you look to the north, there are circumpolar constellations visible at all times of the year. The simplest and most familiar to most of us is the Big Dipper. The three stars of the handle are the brother hunters, and the polygon of the dipper is the bear. The constant in the night sky since childhood for so many of us is this grouping of tiny lights, always there, every night. The two stars on the right side of the bear point to the North Star, Polaris. This star never moves. To quote Bill Shakespeare’s sonnet #116, "It is an ever fixed mark.” All things revolve around this one thing. By the way, the sonnet is about love, love as a constant.

Speaking of constants, what is the strongest thing in the universe? Electromagnetism? Stellar winds? Gravity? Nope. It’s a force known to physicists as the Strong Force. (Got to love the poetry in science---it’s strong and it’s a force. Boom.) It’s what binds two quarks together. (Quark is a word stolen from James Joyce’s novel Finnegan’s Wake, in case you were wondering.) The Strong Force is a fundamental law of nature that binds subatomic particles together to make things like protons and neutrons, which combine to make atoms and, therefore, EVERTHING. This force can inextricably bind together a whole family of disparate particles such as gluons, mesons, baryons, hadrons, uncles and cousins. If these particles are pulled apart, and the "distance” (about 10 to the negative 15 meters, which is a fentometer or about the width of a proton) increases, the force also increases, like a tiny but all-powerful rubber band. The Strong Force is 137 times stronger than magnetism and 10 with 38 zeros after it stronger than gravity. In fact, the Strong Force between two quarks is so powerful that they cannot exist alone; if two are forced apart, the massive energy required to separate them spontaneously creates new particles, new quarks, which are bound together. No "free” quarks exist, nor ever can. Law of the universe.

Here in Vermont in early winter, people want to be home together. "Home is where the heart is” is a proverb so old and ubiquitous that no one seems to agree where it came from. Home is a sort of geography, but it is really where your people are: your partner, your kids, your true friends, your clan, your family. You can’t see The Strong Force, but you can see that smile from those who love you, your mom’s embrace, your sister’s knowing looks, your son’s strong arms. And you can’t beat the expression of bliss that your dog brings when you arrive home. The internet is jammed with the gyrations of a dog overjoyed to be with its humans, the dances, the zoomies, the happy cries of love made visible without the inhibitions of our complicated brains. Home is where that dance happens. Where cookies are baked. Where fires warm and lights are lit. Hugs nonstop, yes please.

With the holidays here and our hearts turning toward home, I think the science guys are only partly right. The true Strong Force is the magic string that binds us over time and distance to our families, to the ones we love. As the fundamental law states, distance can make it pull stronger. Love is the force. It is a constant of the universe. Take your time, my friends, to pull the strings snug.

If you look in the sky tonight and find the three brothers, look to the middle star, the middle one of the handle three. Look very closely and you will see two there. The larger we call Mizar; the smaller is Alcor. In the native story the little one is the dog along on the hunt, and his name is Hold Tight.

Warmth and peace to all my friends and all of yours, and may they overlap more as the days go by. Big hugs through the solstice.

Fast, Slow, How Do You Know?

What does fast mean? Or slow? Seems like a terribly relative distinction. There is a freak of a star discovered in 1961 by Antoni Pryzbylski (say je-bel-skee, one of the all-time great names) with a still inexplicable elemental nuclear recipe that is "rapidly" rotating. Scientists this spring determined the speed to be one rotation every 188 years. (?!) As always, I’m trying to make sense of this in human terms; for instance, a major league fast ball is 100 mph, so a batter has about 400 milliseconds to decide what to do. Blinking takes between 300 and 400 milliseconds. Super fast. Almost two centuries to pirouette? Slacker star. Who calls that fast?

On Memorial Day this year, I was standing on the roof of Fenway Park with my buddy Wily who flies F-16s for the Vermont Air National Guard. We were up there because he was directing the flyover of planes at the end of the national anthem. As precisely as possible, the words "And the home of the brrraaavve…” conclude with the roaring of four Viper turbofan engines plowing through space. Since the jets are going five miles a minute, it’s a tricky dance, with Wily coordinating the song duration from rehearsal with the tower at Logan International Airport with the lead pilot Dan "Gump” Finnegan, who is doing  "an east west bowtie hold"  north of Hanscom Air Base.

So it’s a rhythm thing too. We average 60 to 100 heartbeats a minute. The national anthem from the last eight Super Bowls has averaged a minute and 56 seconds, which is about the time frame Wily was working with. If you are doing CPR, don’t sing "The Star Spangled Banner.” Sing "Staying Alive” by the Bee Gees. It’s the correct 103 beats per minute. "Another One Bites the Dust” by Queen is the same tempo. Just saying. Human hearts are fairly slow, but they do have a steady rhythm.

In October 1944, a professor set up an experiment in a lab in Dublin to demonstrate fluid dynamics using a funnel filled with asphalt that looks solid but is actually a very viscous fluid. It has dripped once is 69 years. The goop is two million times more viscous than honey. But hey, rhythm. Seriously boring rhythm. In human terms, no rhythm at all.

What holds all this together? "Man is the measure of all things,” according to the smart guy Protagoras from 2,400 years ago. Stars spin. Bees making that honey have wings beating 230 times a second. Wily and his pals stroll through the atmosphere at speeds over Mach 2 when they are off leash.  That's humans doing 1500 mph. I hit 57 once on my bike and it felt like Mach 2. My fast is his pokey. Those fastballs are unhittable unless you are Mookie Betts. Phish sang the national anthem once a cappella in a minute and 37 seconds. Radical relativism is the catch phrase, so let’s just agree: it’s not the tempo but the funky rhythm. It’s not the speed; it’s the heartbeat. Timing is everything. Make your entrance at the proper moment, especially if your ride is a jet. Turn before the tree. Don’t miss that wave. Keep breathing.

Who's Got the Blues?

I do. I have the blues. I have turquoise and aquamarine and cobalt and sapphire and navy. And I'm feeling blue, kind of low, pretty dispirited really. No, my dog didn't run off. Nobody stole the truck. Nope, the blues are generally matters of the heart if you listen to any of the great blues musicians like T Bone Walker, Furry Lewis, or John Lee Hooker:"They call it Stormy Monday, but Tuesday's just as bad. You know, Wednesday's worse, and Thursday's oh so sad..." It's a state of being that everybody knows. Listen to "The Sky is Crying." Or not, the title sets it up...

But then there is azure and cerulean, the color of the sky in Colorado. Blue jeans. Indigo. Picasso had a blue period. Lapis lazuli is the blue stone crushed and inlaid with gold in the tombs of the pharaohs to remain fiercely brilliant for millennia. In 2009, chemists in a lab discovered, completely by mistake, a blue pigment made by superheating the elements yttrium, indium and manganese. This new color is arguably the first synthetic blue pigment invented since cobalt blue in 1802 and was subsequently brought to the public by Crayola with a crayon named in an open competition. After 90,000 submissions they settled on Bluetiful. (Haven't we learned by now not to let the public decide things?! Hello, Boaty McBoatface, elections....) This new compound absorbs red and green light waves for a vivid and durable peacock blue.

Speaking of light, and wings, when I was a kid around five, my grandmother had a plate on the wall of the room where my brothers and I slept made of butterfly wings under glass. Aside from the terrifying clown portrait, it was the most amazing thing in her entire house. It was electric blue, almost radiant, lighted magically from within. As an adult, I learned the color of the Blue Morpheus wings was a result of lightwave interference as opposed to an actual pigment in the bug. Check out this link for a bowl I made of anodized titanium around 20 years ago that was exhibited in the Hood Museum at Dartmouth College.

The anodizing process creates a layer of clear oxide on the metal surface that is only millionths of an inch thick. Light bounces off the surface of the metal AND the surface of the oxide to cause wavelength interference, cancelling other colors and letting the blue shine. When one views from the side, the oxide layer is just infinitesimally thicker and hence, purple. The latest science news is about "Quantum Blue," but that is all nano-particles and complicated, and we can deal with it when it makes it into a crayon.

Why does anyone sing the blues, if it's all about misery? How could this art form exist? Books have been written to explain this, but I'm going to use Wile E. Coyote instead. Life, like the Road Runner, is fast, relentless and it never stops. You cannot win the race that makes us worm food.Wile E. Coyote is our existential hero. He never wins. He never, ever, catches that bird. But, regardless, he tries every freaking episode. No matter how bad the blues can be, there is the voice and the guitar, Wile E. with his rockets and springs and anvil, Stevie Ray and Derek Trucks playing their hearts out. Texas Flood, Blak and Blu. Statesboro Blues. The blues is the sound of spirit over odds, defiance over the inevitable. Life is full of tragedy. Even kings die. B. B. King is gone. Floods come. Fires too. Partners leave. The tests are bad.

But midnight blue and the robin's egg blue of morning are not so far apart. Dusk. Deep blues. Dawn. Acoustic blues are good early in the day--Michael Hedges, Tommy Emanuel's version of "Somewhere Over the Rainbow." "Blues Power," by Eric Clapton told me forty years ago that "I got the boogie woogies in my very soul..." And I have come to believe him. B. B. King is gone, but have a serious listen to a twenty-two year-old Marcus King. He is the real deal. As a singer, as a song writer, he can explain Wile E. Coyote in the context of love and life and a flamethrower guitar solo.The notion that these two blues legends each have the last name King should tell us something. Royal Blues...

John Mayer sings,

"Joni wrote Blue in her house by the sea,

I gotta believe there's another color waiting on me...

To set me free."

 "There's no way to delay that trouble coming every day..." sang Baltimore's brilliant son. Sorrow and pain are part of destiny, but we have Miles' "Kind of Blue," and "All Blues." We have "Stella Blue." "Drifting Blues."We have "Blue Sky," which will ALWAYS lift. We have bluebirds. We have blueberries. Yves Klein. Blue eyes, which, by the way, have no actual blue in them. It's all light scattering, like my job. Deep blue sea and the dusty powder blues of the distant Adirondacks at sunset. James Turrell. The sparkle song of a hermit thrush soloing in the woods.And, naturally, light with a dominant wavelength between 450 and 495 nanometers...

That should cheer up anybody.

Peace out all you humans,

Don't be blue, unless you want to. Then be ultramarine...

P.S. Dear friends, and by this I mean those who take the time to read these musings about life and stars and dogs and weeds... I'm not trying to win the day or convert your religion. We are all off the cliff, airborne, waiting to hit the bottom of the canyon with a boulder or anvil following us down. This is precisely why we need love, levity, tricky art and fine music. Without these it's a simple math formula of time, velocity and gravity. "Gravity is working against me, and gravity wants to bring me down..." That's either Sisyphus, Wile E. or John Mayer and the last one has the best voice, I'm sure.

Rock Steady

Transitive Nightfall

Greeting astute humans,

Three weeks ago I was in the studio late and came outside to a moonless, dark night. Stars were bright. I drove a couple blocks to the lakeshore and a spot I know with no street lamps next to the Burlington Surf Club, one of our magical paradoxes in Vermont--a surf club...  I laid back on a huge towel in the grass (sans ticks, i hope) to watch the peak of the Perseid meteor shower. August 11th. Acclimate the eyes. Relax. As always, it's a bit anticlimactic for those of us who love movies with the God of Thunder holding fast in the searing torrent of a dying star's energy blast...

Zip. A momentary streak of white light. A minute later--zip--white line in the blackness over the lake. Silent. Ephemeral.

In 1968, the Grateful Dead released a two-and-a-half minute song as a single that sold around 500 copies. In concert, this song, named "Dark Star," became the de facto anthem of the band's psychedelic journey. Many concert versions of the song lasted up to a half hour; they played it in Rotterdam for over 48 minutes. Then the band stopped playing it for four years. It appeared on New Year's Eve in 1978 and then disappeared. In the following eight years, they played it once. Ultimately, it returned as a staple, and myriad live recordings preserve the special auditory dance that defines the "Dark Star."

After a few streaking meteors, I thought about the difference in the light I was witnessing. Old light, the specks of twinkling white I perceived, were photons generated millions - tens of millions - of years ago. Hundreds of millions of years... The dying dust incandescence of a meteor was new light. Fresh. Instantaneous. Just created. Old, constant. New, a flash...  Poetic. For me, a juxtaposition sublime.

Then, I rolled up the towel. Hopped in my car. Flipped on the headlights. New light!! HA! What a crock. I'm making new light all the time. Snap.

Right there, I was hit with the the definition of poetry. We make the distinctions. Our sensitivity and our spin are what frames all of this reality into moments of beauty. That is us. It's what we do. Dark night, white light. Frame it. Delight.

 The Dead sing,

"Dark star flashes, pouring its light into ashes...

...Shall we go, you and I while we can,

through the transitive nightfall

of diamonds..."   

Yes we can. It's all we get. Good thing it's made of diamonds...

Peace and love ya'll.

Bruce Mac

Light Wobbles and Evil Weeds

Yo Mates,

EXPRESSO is an instrument designed in 2013 and first tested in 2016. As the most sensitive spectrograph ever built, it is engineered to study the tiny wobble in starlight, the minute changes in color caused by gravity, which are created by the orbit of a rocky exo-planet. We are looking for other Earths billions of miles away. It's funded in part by Netflix in the hopes of finding the successor to "Friends" and "Game of Thrones." Nope, sorry, made that last part up.

Light. Tricky stuff. Along the roadsides in Vermont right now is an invasive weed related to the infamous Giant Hogweed, called Wild Parsnip, which can cause phytophotodermatitis. Its sap, the oils on the plant, can get on your skin and when exposed to UV or sunlight will cause second-degree burns. The scars can last for years... Who designed that plant? In 2017, the EU created the Giant Alien Fund to combat the spread of this wicked weed, whose evil had been forewarned by the British band Genesis in 1971 with their song "Return of the Giant Hogweed." Nobody ever listens to prog rockers...

As you know, the sky is blue because that end of the visible spectrum has a shorter wavelength than the red end so blue is scattered more by the molecules that make up air, primarily oxygen and nitrogen. Longer wavelengths pass through, which explains why the sun and the moon near the horizon appear more red. The direct light of the sun has to pass through much more of the atmosphere at the low angle of day's end, and hence, more blue scattering. Also, the dust and water vapor and pollen and smoke allow the longer wavelength red light to pass more easily. We all know this, but the magic of spectral analysis is studying the specific frequencies or lines that are being absorbed. With this analysis we can determine what is in the atmosphere of an exo-planet-- exactly what elements are present and in what ratios and concentrations. We do these because we are fundamentally curious animals. Oh, and by the way, we can determine if it might be habitable for us humans, once we are through destroying our current planet. Or not. It's up to us. Current studies show plants and animals moving away from the equator fifteen feet per day... 

This summer in Vermont has been the most superlative I can remember for sunset watching. Nothing like a daily binge on a non-TV channel with no content--no characters, no plots, no ads....  Just light, water vapor, billowy white up high, then mauve, purples, gold... Watching over a plane of shimmering  H2O helps quite a bit.

While the smart humans and their instruments are analyzing the spectrum of planet HD2O945AB, an exo-planet kind of like Jupiter, billions of miles away, I'll be here with all you guys taking notes on these summer evenings of waves and wavelengths, gleams and sparkles.

Has to be art in there somewhere... Better get back to polishing...

Avoid the flowering roadside monsters. Pay attention in the twilight.

Pink and Green, Same Same

Season's greetings,

Recently, I was down at the Battery in NYC and looking across the water at the Statue of Liberty. Back in the '80s, during the restoration work for the centennial celebration of the Statue, I read all about the crazy engineering of this massive sculpture. It's 305' 6" from the base to the tip of the flame. 100 tons of copper panels held with 300,000 rivets are attached to a wrought iron frame with no contact between these dissimilar metals. Copper touching iron in salt air would disintegrate the iron rapidly through the ion flow from galvanic reactivity. A giant self-destructing battery was not the idea. The restoration engineers marveled at the builders’ architectural stratagems, but wondered why such primitive iron - chock full of impurities with a strangely high carbon content - was used, only to realize eventually that the impurities prevented cracks from propagating. Blazing sun, expansion, snow, wind, ice, lightning, salt, fog... Yep, ready for all that. Gustave Eiffel helped design her before he became famous.

Looking at "Lady Liberty Enlightening the World" - the actual name of the artwork - sent me back to my little infinite library to look up "Hyperion". Not the god, not the moon of Saturn. At 380 feet tall and 600 to 800-years-old, Hyperion is the tallest living thing on earth. Lady Liberty is huge out there in the harbor, but there is a coastal redwood "hidden" on a steep hillside in northern California. The size of a thirty-story building, its actual location is kept secret for its own safety, but, in truth (excepting Man and his tools, of course), these life forms are nearly invulnerable: foot-thick bark; pink heartwood impervious to insect predation; and, even when all the limbs are consumed by fire, the tree will sprout new growth. Hyperion is young and still growing. The normal lifespan of these monsters is up to 2,200 years. Sheer size is helpful too--up to 30% of its moisture needs comes from fog, harvested by the leaves and limbs of these living, literal skyscrapers.

In 2017, someone paid 71.2 million dollars for a rock that weighs about four-tenths of an ounce. It was dug out of the ground in 1999 in Africa and, after two years of study, was cut from 132.5 raw carats into The Pink Star. It's now a 59.5 carat oval and is technically a "mixed cut Fancy Vivid Pink Internally Flawless Diamond".

So, what’s the thread? Giant art. Monster living organism. Tiny sparkly rock. Green. Green (and brown). Pink. Big. Bigger. Pipsqueak. Well, it's #6 on the Chart. Carbon. The high carbon content in the big lady’s iron was intentional and primitive and brilliant. Most of the armatures lasted 100 years, only to be replaced with 316L stainless steel, the exact material I use to push light around. The "L" stands for low carbon. The ancient redwood forest stores more carbon dioxide per acre than any other forest on the planet, including the tropical rainforest, with 1,000 metric tons per acre, double the rate of most forestlands. And, of course, the most concentrated form of pure carbon is a diamond. Impurities like boron make a diamond blue, nitrogen makes a diamond yellow, but pink is thought to be not from impurities, but a specific crystalline lattice structure that simply absorbs green light, therefore reflecting a pink hue. Pure. Purist. So, carbon impurities, good. Carbon capture, really good. Pure carbon, lovely.

Where do WE come into the discussion? Take away the water in my body and I am more carbon than the next element by a factor of ten. I am way, way mostly carbon. The point here is diversity--a single element is all of the above goodness, and in the manifestation of 160-pound me, self aware, creative, arguably the most complex carbon assemblage we will ever know. (Personally, I am not that complicated. But, you know, US, together, all together). One atomic bit can take all these forms. Me and the tree, Lady Liberty and the Pink Star. I like this club. A lot. Art. Plant. Rock. Animal. Diversity is pretty magical when you peer into it--one thing, many forms.

Thanks for following along my friends. Summer is here and time for big Art visits and trees and as much sparkle as possible. 

Moving Air, Moving Art

Often it is easy to overlook the thing that is glaring and large, the obvious can get overshadowed by the details...

In the news this week was the UK running entirely on wind energy for five and a half hours. Denmark has operated for days on wind power alone, as has Portugal. In California, scientists have modeled a solar and wind grid for our country. Their calculations consider that wind is intermittent and solar is well, naturally, doing nothing at night. If we had twelve hours of energy storage capacity, we could be 80% sufficient, and with three weeks of battery storage we could be 100% renewably powered. Buy stock in battery makers...

But this is not the point of my missive. The point is that sometimes we need to state the obvious to truly comprehend the whole picture. When comparing wind power to coal or natural gas generating plants, it is easy to overlook the obvious. Build a fossil fuel facility or a wind turbine? Well, with one of these you never need to buy fuel. Let that sink in.

So, what does this have to do with art? On the right hand, nothing. It's just my way of saving the planet via enlightenment. On the left brain, stating the obvious about art is that it IS and stays being Art. The obvious is that art stays. Bach, Shakespeare, Cézanne... Always right THERE, dancing its little dance, humming its little hum... Actually, Bach in a cathedral with a pipe organ...

But you get the drift. Our lives are awash in flitting images and sounds -- flashing screens, endless words assimilated and replaced moment to moment. Art endures. Great art has tenacity and endurance, permanent awe attached. I am stating the obvious. Yep. But then again, it doesn't need any fuel either.

Pointy Wings and Flying Economy

A frigate is a fast warship. It's also the name of a bird that I have noticed in Florida flying extremely high and never seeming to flap its wings. I stared at one for a while and concluded that it must be some kid's kite just sitting there all geometric angles and solid black. After a little homework, I identified that living kite as a Magnificent Frigate Bird, separate from its other pals, the Great, the Christmas, the Ascension and the Lesser Frigate Birds. Fabulous naming work. Ornithology crosses into poetry at some point. It's also called a Pirate Bird for reasons I will get to.

This is one of nature's architectural masterpieces. It's a sublime point of evolution, a simple silhouette of precision aerodynamics. Although its body is over four feet long and has a seven and a half foot wingspan(!), its bones weigh only four ounces and are hollow. They are half the weight of its feathers. One-fifth of its body is devoted to a complex respiratory system that flows through its bones for cooling. This creates the largest wing area to body weight ratio ever recorded. Satellite tracking followed one bird aloft over the Indian Ocean for two months straight! They have been documented at two and a half miles up, and one was recorded gliding forty miles without flapping its wings.

Magically above, hollow, effortlessly soaring, it lacks the correct anatomy to waterproof its wings so it cannot land on water. Huge sodden wings could drown it. It loves flying fish, thermals, and billowing cumulous clouds. A gliding marauder, it practices kleptoparasitism by harassing smaller flying birds until they disgorge their last meal, which the Frigate Bird snatches from the air. It's the Pirate Bird for this reason.  It doesn't swim. It can hardly walk. Its bill is hooked. Its tail is forked for maneuverability, although from the ground that is not apparent. All black with a metallic green or purple gloss, the male has a bright red throat sac only visible during mating season. It is global, soaring the trade winds.

Locally, wouldn't it be nice to flap just once every six minutes to stay on course?  But, we don't. We run around like our hair is on fire. Our hearts beat around 115,000 times a day. Those little Chickadees that just showed up in the yard and are making a total racket have heart rates around 2,000 beats a minute or 2,880,000 beats a day. My bones weigh around twenty four pounds. The Chickadee's little spherical body weighs a total of about four-tenths of an ounce and they never fly far. So, what is the point?

Art. As usual, is the point. We hairless apes balance between the languorous and the speedy, the wanderers and the homebodies. We can't soar, but we can make symphonies. We know too much about too much, but have the capacity for delight. Our super power is creation. All things reproduce, but we alone see, feel, and interpret.   

On that note, spring is here my friends. Time to open some windows and let the fresh air in. As always, there is art apparent--thoughts and hands and tools and insights push light around for specific effects. That's the best. That's what makes us special creatures - it's our invisible wings.

Love love my friends,

Please share these thoughts wide and far,

Bruce R. MacDonald

P.S. Last week I drove through West Yellowstone and saw a bald eagle standing on a rock in the middle of a nearly frozen stream. It was fishing patiently. Just standing there waiting for the right moment, the right fish... 

* Here is the Extra Pointy 2.0 

You know, I won't ask you to reread this all over again. But just substitute the initials FB for the Frigate Bird. Reading along, la la la. Facebook practices kleptoparasitism.... On high, hollow. Opaque. Lovely. Futuristic. Hooked Bill. Invisible forked Tail. 

Maybe I/we need to stop reading about that stuff on the news feed and pay more attention to the backyard and actual open windows. Birdsongs from the woods rather than the Merlin app. Staring into the depth of the sky instead of the lovely new OLED screen...

We balance when we are balancing in the balance. Originally from Latin, "balance" literally is the use of scales, keeping both sides even. For every virtual an actual. My artwork hovers in this interstitial--you can see the computer image but the thing itself is irreproducible. My art exists, in its essence, only in real life. You cannot experience it without wandering about in front of it. No video can do what your two eyes can do. The wiring from eyes to brain is miraculously precise in orienting space and light, reflection and depth, refraction and motion. To truly "see" my art requires your presence. It's a curse that I accept. It's like making a CD with only half the notes available every time I post an image. 

So, come to a show. Stop by my gallery. Take a walk. Ski really fast. Balance. 

And peace, 

And love.  

Houston, we have a pair of slippers...

There's a crack in my windshield right now that is in the worst possible place--in the middle, crawling up from the lower left to be directly in my line of sight. Really?! Right there? Anywhere else and I could probably get through snow plow and sanding season. Nope, right smack in my line of sight... Cracked vision.

In 1900, L. Frank Baum was writing a book about a magical land of bizarre creatures, talking animals, monkeys with wings, witches, a man made of metal. On his filing cabinet was a label: "O-Z". Thanks to the movie made in 1939, we all know how that adventure turned out. A hundred and forty years prior, Voltaire wrote an insane bit of literature that was banned soon after publication, yet became a best seller. Translated into thirteen languages, the tale mocked government, religion, wealth, medicine, academics, travel, sexual mores, and fundamentally, the spirit of optimism. Our hero's mentor repeatedly stated, "It's the best of all possible worlds." In junior high, I discussed this book with my father, who explained to me the double-edged sword of this statement. "...best of all possible" sounded at once wonderful and depressing. This IS what we get. Yep, it's the best, couldn't be any better. Sounds like the heart of the blues to me... without the guitar solo. 

Turritopsis Dohrnii is a jellyfish from the Mediterranean and the Sea of Japan that has the capability to undergo cellular transdifferentiation. This means its cells can change from one to another--a nerve cell can become a skin cell--in a process considered the holy grail of medicine. Human stem cells have this potential as well. Scientists discovered that they can take a mature Turritopsis and stress it--poke it with needles, make it really cold--and it will revert back to a polyp, a baby, and then grow back into an adult. As far as we know, it is unique in the animal kingdom in its capacity to reverse its biotic cycle. Life, stress, revert to a previous form, regrow to maturity. Repeat endlessly. No other critters can do this. (Then again we humans have the power of writing things down). One of my brothers has told me over and over that stress is the point of growth. Ask anyone training for the Olympics...

Whack. Stress to fracture. Crack my field of vision. Shatter the worldview. And now, regrow. Colonists left the oppression to start the New World. The status quo is shattering behind the force of #MeToo. Solar and wind are destroying the global system of energy production; ask anyone in Colorado or Australia or Sweden. The cyclone comes to carry away Dorothy, Puerto Rico, Houston... Voltaire's hero, Candide, a bastard born to wealth, suffers and falls, loses his family, loses his true love, finds treasure, loses it, loses his mentor, his country. The story ends with a reunification and his family "tending their garden," -- the highest moral good in Voltaire's lacerating parable of redemption. (Come to think of it, there were monkeys in that story too; and a storm and a tsunami and an earthquake and a wildfire and a shipwreck). The Immortal Jellyfish is real. The ruby slippers work. Sometimes the windshield has to be replaced immediately.

And finally, "If the world were perfect, it wouldn't be." That's Yogi Berra--catcher, coach, philosopher, five foot seven inch giant of a man, lifetime batting average of only .285 but he holds more World Series rings than anyone else.

The word for this week is "apricity." It means the warmth of the sun in winter. We all need some of that.

May the apricity find your face. Keep the jets clean and the fires stoked. There is Beauty looking for you. 

Happy February.

Man's Best Invention

What do you think? Computers? Eyeglasses? The book? Smart phones? A solar cell? The wheel? Fire?

We have a device being newly studied and researched that can literally "sniff" for cancer in humans. Using a probe with around 300 million sensors and a mysteriously complex processor, this device is also capable of detecting particular elemental compounds such as explosives or illicit drugs, as well as the high frequencies preceding earth tremors or even if a human is about to experience a seizure. Its sensitivity is so acute it can detect in parts per trillion or a drop of blood diluted by twenty Olympic swimming pools. This device has actually been under development for around 35,000 years.

Yep, this device will keep you warm in the mountains, chase down lions in Rhodesia, rid your house of mice, hunt for stag or raccoons or truffles. It can operate on fuels as diverse as raw meat, potato chips or cat poop. With nearly 525 million of these globally, we humans use them as proximity alarms or for herding sheep and cattle. Some cultures use them as a source of food, but in the U.S. 77 million people have this device in their homes and would never think to cook one. They exist in a staggering array of dimensions from 4 ounces and 2.5 inches tall to 345 pounds. We shot one of these into space to orbit the earth in 1957. Probably not that really heavy one.

Their uses are diverse and specialized. Not only can they be used as a team to haul loads at 30-35 mph for 10 miles, they can pull this same load for up to 100 miles in sub-zero temperatures without needing an extended break. They see for the blind and hear for the deaf. Some are part tugboat while others are pure velocity machines. They comfort the aged and infirm and have been documented trying to teach babies how to play "fetch."

It's our best invention. Man's Best Invention. We adopted these family members millennia ago to get rid of household scraps and warn us of danger. And now they guard us with utter dedication and will fight to the death to protect us. As built-in entertainment centers for children and adults alike, they survive for years, bound to their charges. Endless tales recount their ability to find their way home to their people across extraordinary distances. They give us love and loyalty. They smile and dance around. So, TREATS, and go for an extra long walk today. We are lucky humans. We did a great job with this project. Way better than a cell phone.

Solstice Aloha

Let's start with Peace. And Love. And warmth on the longest night of the year. That is tonight.

But let's not talk about the darkness, because tomorrow is the beginning of the light getting longer and brighter.

Something happened in October that has never happened before. Ever. We saw something in the sky that is not about us in any way. It was as foreign as a thing could ever be. Astronomers in Hawaii saw in the sky a reddish, pinkish object screaming along at 37 miles a second. It was a quarter mile long and about eighty yards in diameter, shaped like a hoagie, or a submarine. It brightened and dimmed, so it must be tumbling slowly. Its trajectory was such that it sailed inside the orbit of Mercury, around the sun, and is now slingshot up to 55 miles per second and is headed back into deep space, leaving our elliptic out past Jupiter. Whatever. Comets do that all the time...

But, this is no comet. Comets are dirty snowballs spewing debris and gases and ice as they cruise their long parabola around the sun and away. And then back again later. Often much much much later. That is what they do. This, however, is doing a profoundly different dance. This thing is not bound by our sun. Its trajectory is hyperbolic, meaning it came from outside our sun's pull and accelerated off in a direction different from the one it came from. We will never see this again.

The Hawaiian scientists named this object "Oumuamua" (Oh-moo-a-moo-a). (Say that four times and you realize that it's the start of a song, pretty sure.) What makes it so special is that it is the first "interstellar" object ever witnessed. Every "thing" we have ever seen is part of our solar system--it belongs to our sun. It is one of our dance partners that twirls around in our magical gravitational neighborhood waltz. Oumuamua is from another star, hurtling along independent of us. It's here. Aloha. (I love that this word means hello and goodbye).

So what does this "mean"? Nothing but what we impart. Space dust doesn't "mean" anything. But, what could it mean? The name, Oumuamua, means "scout" or "messenger." What might be the message? Why now?

Well, in my tiny and infinite universe, it is the metaphor for different. This red rock pickle from deep space is here to remind us that change happens. Anything is possible. The message is "paradigm shift". Wake up and recognize the temporality of everything. Hello people of Earth. Bet you didn't expect this. Surprise! And now everything is different. Time to think differently. Maybe someday one of these will have beings on board and will we be proud of our planet, our home, our neighbors, our warmth, our humanity? Oumuamua is the shot across the bow of our cruise ship.

So my friends, happy dark-change-to-light, happy solstice. Merry Merry. Now is a good time to love each other with all our hearts. Now is a good time to make change our path. Oumuamua is the signal, methinks. Why shouldn't it be? Peace on earth sounds good right about now.

Aloha and massive hugs,

May 2018 truly be a new year...

Bruce R. MacDonald

Hot Soup, Gold and the Kiss of Creation

Hi folks,

Let's start with Einstein, smartest guy I never met. In 1916, he surmised that since space time was bendy, ("relative" is the term he liked) then there could be waves, like surf. Ripples in space time. Exactly 100 years later, in February of 2016, the LIGO, Laser Interferometer Gravitational Wave Observatory, detected a ripple caused by the merger of two black holes. The LIGO has two "light storage" arms set at right angles that are each 2.5 miles long. These are not like my "light storage"--a kitchen drawer with flashlights, bulbs and batteries. These are beams of a laser in a vacuum tube that through mirror trickery increase the effective length of the light beams to 696 miles. In essence, these brilliant scientists have a rod that long and they are looking for it to stretch the distance of 10 to the negative 18 meters, or roughly the size of one thousandth of the diameter of a proton. (Pretty weensy change, methinks. There is some serious math at work there). If they see that, and they did, this proves that Einstein was again correct and there is such a thing as a gravitational wave. Space time is indeed flexible. Things can go boom with enough force that a billion miles away space time ripples get to Earth. Imagine what is happening in that neighborhood! To imagine we need a DRFPMI. (Look it up). (Or not, if you are not into Noisebudget, Squeezed Film Dampening, Substrate Brownian, Parametric Instabilities or FINESSE. These are the poetics of quantum physics AND excellent band names....)

Last week scientists had a bonanza. LIGO and a sister instrument detected a ripple and told all the astronomers where to look. A gamma ray detector in orbit pinged confirmation two seconds later and all the major telescopes, around 70, on earth pointed at the same tiny spot of the cosmos. Even Hubble dialed in.

When black holes merge there is nothing to see--all radiation, gamma rays, X-rays, all light frequencies are eaten up by the all powerful gravity. KA BOOM with no evidence excepting the teeniest stretch of the LIGO beam.

Neutron stars are old suns that run out of fuel and collapse into the densest stuff we can still see--a teaspoon full has the mass of Mt Everest. Our sun would turn into a ball of magnetic flux 12 miles in diameter. (You guys all know it is around 864,300 miles in diameter. Right. Check.) Only 130 million light years away from us, (also check, a light year is 5.88 trillion miles) two neutron stars that were locked into a gravitational twirl finally got close enough for their first and last cataclysmic kiss. The resulting "kilonova," (new word y'all, spread that around), mashed protons and neutrons in a furious bath of radiation creating ALL the primordial elements heavier than iron. The debris field from these two 12 mile balls colliding is the size of our solar system. 40 to 100 times the mass of the earth of gold was created instantly. 10 to 30 times the earth's mass of platinum and uranium just appeared out of the atomic stew to be strewn across millions of miles of space.

I highly recommend checking out the animated renderings of all this that you can find on the interwebs. Cataclysmic events are best when you have a cartoon to go by. Once again the tiniest and the most massively unfathomable things are linked, and human beings with insanely sophisticated quantitative tools are marveling at our natural surroundings. There is poetry in the science, and metaphor too. What are children but the golden offspring of two super dense objects getting too close? If we are anything, we are precious and know it. If we are anything, it is a pair of eyes looking for nuance. Tiny ripples that prove we are here and watching. Tiny wavelets across the emptiness... light wiggling, sparks...

Surf the waves everyday, my friends. As my buddy Larry says, "Everyday is a gift. That is why we call it the present."

Come visit the latest playing with light and shapes at SOFA Chicago 2017 this weekend, November 2-5, at Navy Pier. 

We are stretching and bending and refracting and reflecting and hanging about looking for the next kaboom...