Musical Imagination

"Perception is never purely in the present,

it has to draw on experience of the past;
We all have detailed memories of how
things have previously looked and sounded,
and these memories are recalled are
admixed with every new perception.

...

Music can also evoke worlds

very different from the personal,

remembered worlds of events,

people, places we have known.

...

Every act of perception, is
to some degree an act of creation, and
every act of memory is to some
degree an act of imagination."

- Oliver Sacks (1933 - 2015)
Musicophilia

Worlds Born

"Each friend represents a world in us, a
world possibly not born until they arrive,
and it is only by this meeting
that a new world is born."

- Anais Nin (1903 - 1977)
The Diary of Anaïs Nin

Kal-Toh

"Ensign Harry KIM:
That's kal-toh, isn't it? Vulcan chess?

Lieutenant TUVOK:
Kal-toh is to chess as chess is to tic-tac-toe.

...
(Icheb is trying his hand at Kal-toh. Kim coughs just before he makes a move. Icheb moves the rod to another place and Kim nods slightly)
TUVOK: In the interest of fair play, I should inform you that Mister Kim has never defeated me at Kal-toh.
(Icheb places the rod at his first chosen place. The shape does not change.)
KIM: You should've listened to me.
(Tuvok's rod changes the shape.)
TUVOK: Kal-toh is as much a game of patience as it is of logic. An experienced player will sometimes take several hours to decide his next move, and in some cases even days may be necessary to
(Icheb places a rod.)
ICHEB: Kal-toh.
KIM: You beat him.TUVOK: Congratulations.
ICHEB: I'm sure it was just beginner's luck, sir. I'd offer you a rematch, but I'm due in Astrometrics.
TUVOK: Another time, perhaps.
(Icheb leaves. Kim takes his place opposite Tuvok.)
KIM: He may have to go, but I'm free and feeling lucky.
TUVOK: If you'll excuse me, Ensign.
(Tuvok leaves the table.)
KIM: It's just a game, Tuvok."

- Star Trek: Voyager (1995 - 2001)

Vibrating Universe

"Gravitational waves are fundamentally different. Not only is a gravitational wave a side-to-side, lateral wave like light, not a longitudinal wave like sound, but it isn’t a ripple through objects in spacetime; it passes through spacetime itself. When a gravitational wave passes by, spacetime squeezes and contracts. This oscillation influences matter, which exists in spacetime – but doesn’t require matter to be able to travel. It’s quite demeaning to gravitational waves to call their detection ‘hearing the sound of black holes in space’ as some have done. By comparison, sound is a trivial local effect. Gravitational waves make the universe itself vibrate."

- Brian Clegg (1955 - )
Gravitational Waves

Mitote Maya

"He realized that everyone was dreaming, but without awareness, without knowing what they really are. They couldn’t see him as themselves because there was a wall of fog or smoke between the mirrors. And that wall of fog was made by the interpretation of images of light — the Dream of humans.

...

Your whole mind is a fog which the Toltec called a mitote (pronounced MIH-TOE´-TAY). Your mind is a dream where a thousand people talk at the same time, and nobody understands each other. This is the condition of the human mind — a big mitote, and with that big mitote you cannot see what you really are. In India they call the mitote maya, which means illusion. It is the personality’s notion of 'I am.' Everything you believe about yourself and the world, all the concepts and programming you have in your mind, are all the mitote. We cannot see who we truly are; we cannot see that we are not free."

- Miguel Ruiz (1952 - )
The Four Agreements

Complex Processes

"Like a wave in the physical world, in the infinite ocean of the medium which pervades all, so in the world of organisms, in life, an impulse started proceeds onward, at times, may be, with the speed of light, at times, again, so slowly that for ages and ages it seems to stay, passing through processes of a complexity inconceivable to men, but in all its forms, in all its stages, its energy ever and ever integrally present."

- Nikola Tesla (1856 - 1943)

Flashes in the Dark

"These considerations lead me to believe that the first human interaction with extraterrestrial life will consist of contact with organisms similar to, if not identical to, earth bacteria or viruses.

...

It is living, breathing, walking, and talking. Only we cannot see it, because it is happening too slowly. Rock has a lifespan of three billion years. We have a lifespan of sixty or seventy years. We cannot see what is happening to this rock for the same reason that we cannot make out the tune on a record being played at the rate of one revolution every century.

...

The rock, for its part, is not even
aware of our existence because
we are alive for only a brief
instant of its lifespan. To
it, we are like flashes
in the dark.

..."

- Michael Chrichton (1942 - 2008)
The Andromeda Strain