“Our hearing may not be sensitive enough to register the subtle sounds produced by subtle vibrations. All movements are accompanied by vibrations and vibrations are accompanied by sound.” - Summer Showers, 1979
Last week, while in Portugal, I visited a contemporary art museum called Serralves. They were showing The Great Silence, a short film narrated from the perspective of an endangered parrot that lives near the once-functioning Arecibo telescope in Puerto Rico.
The film explores humanity’s drive to find other intelligence in space while on Earth there is “a vast and still-mysterious constellation of minds that most of us rarely even consider.”
The film toggles between two scenes: parrots flying through a lush forest and grey machinery suspended above a sink hole. It dances between a smattering of bird calls and the low and constant whir of the telescope. All the while, a third screen is silent but displays words from the parrot’s storytelling - a poetic explanation about the similarities between parrots and humans; a philosophical exploration of what it means to be a vocal learner and how crucial sound is in our world.
At one point it says that when the telescope is pointed between stars, it picks up a humming sound. It is the sound of the universe, the residual radiation from the Big Bang. This sound is what the yogis designated as OM, it says, a sound that contains everything within it. It is the sound of creation and will continue to hum as long as the universe exists.
This nod to resilience, persistence, and longevity moved me. As I stood there, I felt small among the towering screens and surround sound. Maybe that was the artists’ intention. It was a similar feeling as to when I stand at the foot of the ocean or during that time of day when the angle of the sun makes the lake sparkle.
It makes me feel small. Not in an insignificant way, but in a way that reminds me of my place in all of it. A feeling that makes me realize how big and grand life is underneath the personalized complexities of our lives. It reminds me that though life twists and turns and can be overwhelmingly complex, we can find our way back to the more simple and constant hum of our wholeness. We can connect back to the ocean of our originality even within a fragmented experience. We can reorient ourselves towards what has always been there, and what will remain.
We’ll explore these ideas, and more, in my upcoming Splendor of Recognition philosophy course. Our first session will cover the idea of consciousness and how the yogis see it as a combination of light and awareness. How does our perspective shift the world around us? I’ll also guide you through an embodiment practice that uses sensation and savoring to ground us in the expansiveness of the moment. We’re just under two weeks away from our first class! You can find out more and register here. Each session will be recorded in case you can’t make it live. Hope to see you there :)
<3 Sarah