Today’s blog
Lynn Murphy Mark
A start to the day
Music has always been a crucial element contributing to my well-being and sense of connection with the All That Is. I know that years ago, in 1977 to be exact, NASA sent a capsule into outer space. In this vessel is a phonograph record made of gold plated copper. With it is a phonograph needle and a cartridge explaining how it is to be played. Whenever it is found and figured out, the recipients will hear our voices speaking in over 50 languages, as well as earth sounds of waves and wind. Ninety minutes of the recording features music from all over the world, both classical and ethnic in nature. By 1990 the space craft was just beyond Pluto’s orbit. It is estimated that it will need to travel for 40,000 years before it encounters another planetary system. As Carl Sagan said, “The spacecraft will be encountered and the record played only if there are advanced spacefaring civilizations in interstellar space.”
The music selections include works by Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. The Mozart piece is the Soprano’s aria from the Magic Flute, a showpiece of the capabilities of the human singing voice. There is music from Japan, China, Peru, Australia and Mexico. Louis Armstrong and Chuck Berry are featured. I discovered that it is possible to stream some of the selections that are posted by NASA and available for streaming from SoundCloud.
On August 1, 2012, Voyager 1 entered interstellar space, meaning that it passed the most remote source of energy from our sun. Space.com says this, “Interstellar space is the area between the stars, but it is far from empty. It contains vast quantities of neutrinos, charged particles, atoms, molecules, dark matter and photons ranging from the highest-energy radiation to the sluggish light of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) albeit rather sparsely spread out.” Some of the material in interstellar space is tiny fragments of stars that have died eons ago.
Well, I got carried away by the notion of music being sent into the cosmos. While writing this I am listening to piano music by George Winston. I have collected three of the albums that brought him recognition as one of the earliest and best “new age” artists. The albums are all Windham Hill productions, starting in 1980 with “Autumn”. The other two are “Summer”, and “Winter into Spring”. Each feature a style of playing that he dubbed, “folk piano”. What George Winston and I have in common is that we were both born in 1949 – a very good year. Sadly, he died last year in June at our age of 73. In my imagination, his energy is now a part of the interstellar realms of the Universe.
Listening to the random selections of his albums for some reason led me to think about the Voyager spacecraft carrying its message of the best features of Earth. Realizing how much distance Voyager has already covered makes me marvel at what we humans are capable of achieving. We have created a vehicle that will travel for centuries of time as we know it. Partner that with George Winston’s fanciful music and I am even more impressed with us as a species. There is so much potential for creativity and possibility stored in our human brain cells. To me, that is a God thing doing its best work.