ichael . benson on Thu, 15 Jul 1999 11:21:08 +0000 |
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Syndicate: No, *i* wanna be #13 |
Interesting about this number thirteen business. Apollo 13, famously, managed to have an on-board explosion and barely made it back to Earth. Any foolhardy volunteer thirteenth moonwalker would have to contend with that, and hope the launch date wasn't, you know, 06/06/06, something like that. Still, *I* wanna go as well. Where do I sign? Wading through a big fat book on the Apollo program not so long ago -- by Andrew Chaiken; it's as long as War and Peace -- I learned some interesting things. For instance did you know that the astronauts, as they tried to sleep, in hammocks slung within the cramped lunar module, listened to the thin metal shell surrounding them tick and creak, as internal air-pressure worked against tin and external sunlight? Outside, dry hills, empty empty valleys. Directly above, that blue pearl in black heaven. A valued early memory is of that almost impenetrably grainy, boxed, black and white image of Neil Armstrong backing down the ladder. We're in the basement of my family's house in Bethesda, Maryland. The TV, a small G.E. job with a bulbous, fish-bowl aspect to it, flickers in the early hours of the morning. My parents have woken us up, intent on seeing to it that the kids experience this singular moment of history. Ghostly, spectral, this manifestly uncharismatic man slowly makes his way down towards the overexposed sand, probably muttering his lines to himself like a nervous actor. His face is hidden behind that giant black monocle -- no doubt a great source of relief to him. But, in contrast to his shy persona, his name seems specifically reconstituted from Viking legend to serve as a perfect tag for one of the great explorers: Arm-Strong. Forget the famous words: what's Neil actually *doing?* He's taking a step backwards into time and history. Why backwards? I'm sure there are many good technical reasons -- all of which translate into his doing his best not to break his neck -- but in retrospect it's because that step wasn't just onto the lunar surface; it was also into *history's dual stream.* Not just into the future, but also into the past. A step not just towards the stars, but back, in the direction of those same stars flickering at the other end of time, illuminating an emerging human sentience. Backwards, that is, towards fire, the wheel, the pyramids; towards open longboats skirting Greenland glaciers. In other words, any step forward in time towards the stars has to contend with the fact that all that starlight was flung across space centuries, or millennia, before we were even born. We never step twice into the same river, Ok; but Heraclitus didn't necessarily notice that this river flows in diametrically opposite directions depending on which bank the observer chooses. Filmmakers are familiar with the principle. *Screen left. Screen right.* Armstrong stepped backwards into time's stream, and the ripples from his boot extended in both directions. His foot landed, without his knowing it, on a line with no beginning or end, connecting him both to our innumerable star-gazing ancestors and to unknowable future generations of space-faring mankind. *All the rivers flow into the sea.* Neil Armstrong, and that immense ziggurat of technicians, engineers and cold-war cash that put him there, achieved one of the greatest accomplishments "of all time". But what does this mean, exactly? The ineffable substance extends backwards and forwards, in an immense, bi-directional flow. *And the sea does not fill.* Something about the size, shape and missions of those giant obelisks -- the thundering Saturn-5's, vaulting towards the moon -- linked them, unmistakably, to the aspirations of the ancients. Even at that age, I got it. To this day I think we should have left one Apollo rocket as it was, poised on the launch-pad, frozen in time and anchored in place, there to serve as a piece of architecture, built to last for centuries. And yeah, I would drop everything, put a fishbowl on my head, breathe the pure oxygen. Thirteen or not. Cheers, Michael Benson <michael.benson@pristop.si> <http://www.ljudmila.org/kinetikon/> ------Syndicate mailinglist-------------------- Syndicate network for media culture and media art information and archive: http://www.v2.nl/syndicate to unsubscribe, write to <syndicate-request@aec.at> in the body of the msg: unsubscribe your@email.adress