String theory

It is quite possible that if we could not imagine hypothetical hidden worlds, then the world of our experience might become intolerable. -- Lawrence Krauss, physicist

Searching for 'infinitely large extra dimensions (that) have remained hidden from all of our experimental probes' may be the heady stuff of string theory, but the desire for sensual, cognitive texture erupting within the ordinary -- this is not so rare.

I hear about a woman who is lost, her every day as gray as the one before. One morning, her neighbor sees her singing down the street. The woman explains that she finally went to get voice lessons. She is enthralled by the process. 'I have a crush on singing,' she says.

Falling in love, into the richer dimension of existence where pettiness and tedium subside, that is powerful stuff. I notice this in performance. I might have a wicked pre-show headache but while I am performing, I have no consciousness of it. The ache must be someplace, grinding away at the nerve endings, since it returns after the show. Meanwhile, I'm attending to my true love, the transfixing live performance.

There is a music professor at Ohio State University who understands the athletic demands of the saxophone. He trains his whole body, not just fingers, lips, lungs. His students emulate him; the veil is torn asunder once again, the deep, jubilant world revealed.

From whence comes passion? I don't know. The Aviator portrays Howard Hughes, obsessed with far more than germs on the door handle, lint on the lapel. He can't not design airplanes. He can't choose the comfortable millionaire's life as long as there is a sky to be pleasured by his craft. His downward spiral into mental illness is interrupted when a government probe threatens to shut down Hughes Aircraft, that beehive of invention, indelible monument to Hughes' overarching sanity.

The nutty scientist is about as rife in our cultural mythology as the crazy artist. But I wonder if the flatness of the passion-free zone isn't today's insanity. Tell me that preoccupation with amassing gold and prestige makes a dent in a person's soul and I will ask you for irrefutable evidence. I need to see the woman singing down the street, the man defying gravity, the sax sustaining the weight of the world on its extraterrestrial sonic wave.