Scryberspace

Vanitas, featuring hums, glows, and memento mori.

Fluorescence’s name and mechanism were defined by Sir George Gabriel Stokes in the mid-19th century (yes, that’s our friend Stokes of fluid dynamics fame). But the phenomenon itself had been defined much earlier at least by Athanasius Kircher, and possibly thousands of years earlier in ancient China, as a property not only of phosphorus, but of plants and even of fireflies, where it was eventually termed luciferin, after everyone’s favorite fallen angel.

Today we confine the phenomenon largely to tubes on office ceilings, illuminating circles for hells not envisaged by Dante. But it also ranges free in the body paint, hair color, and even tattoos with which some of the residents adorn themselves in the after hours, if not the afterlife.

In terms of a personal glow, what other people see in any of us is entirely up to them, and is subject to change at any moment. Will you glow in the dark if no one is there to see it?

In answer to aisling-stargazer, who asked, “how was fluorescence discovered?” and “what is it about me that others are so keen with but I can’t seem to understand?”

“Angels and Bits,” featuring Fred Astaire, telegraphs, telephones, and the world wide interwebs.

John Dee thinks of calligraphy as the record of the hand’s movement. And as the stroke is the record of the hand, so the dance is the record of the body. These gestures are less about communication itself, and more about conducting it with flair.

Your questions concern both embodiment and legibility. With the virtual turn, embodiment becomes a more flexible concept, whereas legibility becomes more fraught. Conducting is strictly defined as on or off. Any move away from strict function is error, especially at the level of the bit, and any bit-level flair must be encoded as error. So a move toward calligraphy must read error as art.

As for the angels: all of them, but in sequence, as the alternating states of the bit tap out the 9 billion names of God.

…     — . —

In answer to LRJP!, who asked, “How many angels can dance on the head of a bit?  Is it impossible to imagine that there might one day be a sort of calligraphy of the bit?”

During his previous manifestation, John Dee made the mistake of believing that the dead have special knowledge of the future by virtue of an apparent similarity, in that neither one is currently here. And paid for the mistake in real currency, both reputational and financial. Therefore, he cautions petitioners against coding too many links between arbitrary correlations and seeming similarities. The links may be all, and only, what you make them.

Apocalyptic visions and other sweeping declarations satisfy our desire for a single conclusion, a single goal, a single answer: a grail, if you will. A shortcut rent through endless webs of ambiguity. However, just because there exists a desire does not entail its necessary satisfaction. The ability to abstract does not entail that abstraction’s manifestation. There is no grail that does not fragment into many grails. Which makes it rather difficult to drink from that cup.

If you believe that the world will end — for you? For our current way of life? For the planet? For time? — you are right, although it is doubtful that all of those ends, or any of them, will co-instantiate. In the meantime, John Dee advises: carry on and keep calm.

In answer to @tezcatlipoca, who asked, “is it true the world will end in 2012?”

Only Connect

John Dee recognizes that by submitting this query, the petitioner is not seeking a chronicle of once and future events. Instead, the “What am I doing” contains an implicit “What should I be doing,” that is the real focus of the inquiry. It may be that an implicit normativity is contained within every list. If so, consider carefully your elaborations, and wield your sequencing with care.

In answer to @tezcatlipoca, who asked, “What am I doing with my life? If you can’t figure it out, that’s ok… can I have Johnny Depp’s phone number instead?”

“Hope lies in sense, you said…”

In answer to @katiegid, who asked, via Twitter, “can people start acting in their own future interest, or do I just embrace ‘I told ya so’ and the fall of a misguided culture?”