Mary said the other day at the British Library: “I like the lift, it is like a department store, it tells you what is on every floor” Bing! Third floor: maps, bestiary and accessories… Bing! Second floor: fights, states, empires and home delivery… Bing! First floor: philately, magna carta and cafeteria.
I was early and so had lunch with the bebushka in the café. Well, I had lunch and she devoted herself to throwing bits of banana on the floor. That is to say, I say lunch but it didn’t deserve the name, but anyway, there is no point in entering culinary existentialism.
It caught my attention that everyone looked as if they were somewhere else. They were probably not only somewhere else but also in some other time. Public places should be opened for solitaries with laptops, or expand the cafeterias. I was still hungry because I didn’t know how to take Bebushka to the queue without making too much of a mess.
Mary and I were meeting there to see an exhibition on art and science. Since I read a book about Einstein in which his scientific process was explained I think that art and science are much more related than what it seems from the outside.
The are not opposed to each other. In both one has to visualise a result before it exists, both require the belief that that result is possible and then find the way of getting there.
Each with its laws, must be true to the process and to the discipline, otherwise there is no science nor art. I am not going to talk about science, because, like many people, I didn’t go beyond Newton, even if I have read about some more modern theories. But I can talk about art. Although not about the exhibition that I went to see to the British Library. Because even if I only went three days ago, I don’t remember it. Which says a lot. I remember one comment on one piece, but not because of it being artistic, but cosmic.
The artist asked herself if all the knowledge that we produce dies with the universe and gets reborn again when the universe is reborn, if it does. Well, that if it is cyclic. The universe is created with the Big Bang, life appears, life builds libraries, adds content (that if it is civilised life, if not it gets busy destroying them), the sun turns off, life and libraries disappear, everything gets together again and… Bang! We start again…
Illustration from the Feminist Gooseneck Barnacles Series.
“I need to sit down”