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Thank you Renate for the introduction and xtine and Judy for sharing the
information about your forthcoming book, I look forward to hearing more
from you and the other contributors!
In regard to the overall month's theme of Aquarius and care for the greater
planet, I wanted to share an excerpt from Ray Bradbury's 1951 short story,
"The Fog Horn." In it, a lighthouse operator, McDuff, imagines the thought
process behind inventing the foghorn as such:
*"We need a voice to call across the water, to warn ships; I'll make one.
I'll make a voice that is like an empty bed beside you all night long, and
like an empty house when you open the door, and like the trees in autumn
with no leaves."*
His melancholy description sets the stage for an ancient sea monster's
entrance. The "last of its kind," mistakenly drawn to the surface by the
sound of the foghorn. It's looking for something like kinship after,
"million years of waiting alone," but it finds instead an inanimate object.
It flies into a rage and destroys the lighthouse...
"The Fog Horn," reads as a warning, to consider the impact of the
technologies we create on the world around us, with McDuff expressing
deference for the unknowable depths of the ocean. Looking backward, it's
easy to feel patronizing toward the mysteries of past generations, assuming
we've chased away the shrouds of myth and lore with logic, science and
invention. But I'm happy to be reminded of what's unknowable. In my recent
work <https://www.instagram.com/p/CL7_HhClBAp/>, I've been making
solar-powered messages to be worn on the body. It's the beginning of a
series of pieces that will be self-sufficient in their power needs, and an
opportunity to think about making technologies/traces/signs that might be
received by an unknowable audience.
Wishing you all well from brooklyn.
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