Before posting my reflection on today’s studies, I must go back a couple of days to some discoveries I made in the weekend. First was Dr. Michio Kaku’s discussion of dark matter in our universe:
Not only is it fascinating that 80% of everything that ever was and ever will be is a literal unknown element physicists can only describe as the opposite of everything that we know about the universe, based upon the four fundamental forces derived from light. It oddly ties together with last summer’s blockbuster Thor: The Dark World where the universe was threatened by being reset, as this opening scene mysteriously sets up:
It is a bit of a stretch, but my experiences today prove that imagination is perhaps the only way to know the unknown matter in the universe, “such stuff” Prospero claims “as dreams are made on.” (Tempest, VI.i)
<p>There were two worlds that I visited today that brought home how intricately connected each are to a multiverse of other imaginary worlds: UBC’s Centre for Interactive Research on Sustainability and Bard on the Beach. Very interesting that I got to visit both on the same day, and make the discovery that there are perhaps infinite spaces, each as unique as the individuals who work, study and entertain themselves at these places. Dr John Robinson was my guide is afternoon through CIRS, and while there is so much potential for world-changing design being tangled in red tape, the last thing that me mentioned was the most exciting. Here is the note I jotted down:
Sustainability in an imagined world
next big project
Richard Rorty: Redemptive truths
“World is fictional all the way down.”
That Dr. Robinson revealed that his centre received funding for a three year project by referring to Rorty’s rise of literary culture AND that the social scientists and humanities are just as key to a well rounded educational program as the highly touted STEM subjects is more than just coincidence. I was meant to be in that room to hear this information, so closely tied to one of my proposed research topics: narrative inquiry into imaginary space. He needs someone like me on his well funded team, and here’s why: I have got connections to a huge resource, that other world I mentioned above, Bard on the Beach.
As a loyal patron of Vancouver’s summer Shakespeare festival since 1996, it was seeing the plays performed live that really got me interested in the imaginary spaces these plays present (n.b., not a representation of reality, but a presentation of reality on stage). In 2004, I took my interest in these plays a step further, first by volunteering and that same season employed as the Boutique (gift shop) Manager. Since then I have been on friendly terms with Bard staff, and more importantly they have been friendly with me. Even tonight, attending Paul Budra's lecture on A Midsummer’s Night Dream, I was greeted by the educational administrator and I hadn’t seen in her in months. Bard on the Beach is now in its 25th season, a great example of sustainability in the otherwise hit-and-miss world of independent theatre companies. If I could map out my post-PhD career, I would be teaching anywhere in the world (preferably Japan) eight months of the year so that I could return to Vancouver each summer to be employed as a Bard educator. As Cleopatra says "It’s past the size of dreaming” (Antony & Cleopatra V.ii) but not impossible. 🙂
Anyhow, the connection both have to imaginary space is the way that Dr. Budra referred to three different worlds in AMND: “There is the real world, and the dramatic world and then the imaginative world of fairies” that are all on stage throughout this play (and in many ways combined in every other play). The character of Bottom, the Athenian tradesperson who seems more at home in the Guilds of Early Modern London than Ancient Greece, is the only one to experience all three: his everyday bumbling activities as a “rude mechanical”, his dramatic embodiment of the tragic Pyramis, and his stint as a donkey-headed fairy’s lover. When looking for the place of the natural world in this play, one would expect to find it in the real world of star-cross’d lovers and cruel Athenian laws against Hermia or offending noble playgoers. Instead, as Dr. Budra eloquently pointed out, there are more references to the flowers and trees of Shakespeare’s England in the fairies’ speeches than there are in all of the other Dreamers. What do you think, Dr. Robinson? Don’t you need someone like me (and Dr. Budra if he is on my committee) on your well-funded research team?
Yep, the same Dr. B on lead guitar for the Dadolescents!