The Context

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It is not unusual to approach the writing of a story from one perspective, but to draw from that single perspective a very different conclusion. Perhaps many different conclusions. The very process of thinking through the germ of an idea generates new concepts, questions and analogies. Metaphor is important. Self-awareness is inevitable. Shared experience is key. The essence of all personal experience is intensely private, but the experience itself is universal. My pain is unknowable to others, but everyone knows what it is to feel pain. My joy is rooted in emotions that I alone can feel, but joy is a universal emotion that can be felt by any human being.

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The Process

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Blood moon this week. Not visible from here. Only images from around the world, captured photographically. Cosmological. Astrophysical. Almost evangelical. A digital record of a lunar event. A human reaction to a natural phenomenon. Interesting to see how otherwise disconnected people are drawn equally to something so breathtakingly beautiful that it mitigates, however briefly, the differences between us. How, almost simultaneously, reality is suspended, commonalities are found, biases are lost and disparities cease to exist. Only a shared human experience is left in its wake. A universal expression of wonderment. The unification of religious beliefs. The total eclipse of geopolitical constructs and geographical borders.

 

Blood moon. Blood red. Blood brothers.

 

Very compelling and metaphorical; to bleed for your art, to bleed for your craft, to bleed for what you believe in. An artist paints. A dancer dances. A musician plays. A writer writes. This is who they really are, not merely what they do. It is not their profession, it is a solemn act of contrition. A public confession. A scream for attention. Intensely intimate and personally rewarding, but only meaningful when shared with others.

 

Interesting to see the many ways in which the rare and nearly solemn emanation of the Blood Moon was captured and depicted. Some focused on the intensity of the color. Some were captivated by the slowly moving trajectory of a blood red circle buoyantly and weightlessly hovering in the distance. Mythic. Mysterious. Miraculous. Others, more playfully, used it as a prop; perched atop a lamppost like an incandescent bulb, balanced on the lighted torch of Lady Liberty, resting in the open palm of a less than sober pub-mate.

 

Fascinated by the creativity, diversity and interpretation of diverse peoples and personalities; perspective, introspection and illusion. Interesting wordplay, as well.

 

Allusion and illusion are similar but subtly different. Allusion, meaning to play with an idea. Insinuating. Implicating. Inferring. Implying. It is an indirect comparison that 'alludes' to something else. It is a metaphor, in many ways, for many other things. Allusion is cerebral. It is concept. It is thought. Illusion, by comparison, is meant to intentionally deceive. It is prestidigitation. It is skillful sleight of hand. First you see it, then you don’t. Always there, but never seen. It creates a false impression that is carefully composed. Illusion is quite visual. It is perception. It is art.

 

Allusion is objective. Illusion is subjective.

 

So, too, with perspective and perception. Perspective captures a point of view. It places things in context in relation to each other. Perspective is external. It derives from outer-things. Perception, by contrast, relies upon the senses. It is a feeling or an impulse that is rooted in emotion. It is instinctive and intuitive. It is insightful and innate. Perception is internal. It rises from within.

 

Perspective paints a picture. Perception makes it real.

 

Then there is Jean Paul Sartre who said that introspection is always retrospection. That, the very act of contemplation puts your life into perspective. A reconciliation of the present and the past. A tacit affirmation that time does not stand still. An inward search. An outward journey. Another step along the way.  One step closer to the future. One step further from the past.

 

All of these symbiotic contradictions are captured quite beautifully by Einstein and Campbell—Einstein in his quest for understanding and explaining the external world, and Campbell by the relentless need to comprehend and experience a very human inward journey.

 

Blood moon. Blood red. Blood brothers.