[Miscellany]

I bought a ticket to a play a while ago that has haunted me ever since I saw it.  It was called Constellations and it was produced by the MTC (as an an interpretation of a play by British playwright Nick Payne). The play tells the story(ies) of a couple but in a way that is not linear at all.  The whole play is one long piece of dialogue expertly ping-ponged (made up verb) between two actors on stage playing out different manifestations and realities of their life as a couple.   It brought up a lot of questions for me and the different realities of my own life.

If at any point, or at every point for that matter, we come to a fork in the road is the chance of us taking any of those branching pathways weighted the same as the other?  Is the homeless man homeless because he forgot to brush his hair one morning or ran the red light?  Can we at any point deviate and create a new life for ourselves regardless of what has come before?  Is there another, better version of us happening right now in this multi-verse?

I wonder a lot now about the Many-Worlds interpretation of Quantum Mechanics.  I am not a Scientist.  I am a dreamer who doesn't need or even want a theory to be proven true, the thought is enough for me.  Sometimes the thought itself is truth enough! This is the opposite of being a Scientist - a la people that forge their lives on proving theories.  I don't need proof.   In any case, I realise that Quantum Theory is riddled with, at best, uncertainty and at worst is an absolute lie.  I don't even know enough about it to make that statement properly but it's my blog and I'll pontificate if I want to.

Almost (...almost) certainly, you cannot have parallel lives existing simultaneously but certainly our actions and reactions do bring about certain responses in others and ourselves from which more action will take place.  That action helps to creates our future.  Even so, sometimes things happen that are a freak occurrence.  Sometimes life brings about things you cannot plan for and even the best possible response from you will not glean an equal and opposite reaction.  Or does it?  Perhaps all responses are simply 'meant to be'?  Perhaps it is as written and nothing more..which seems unlikely.  Or perhaps it's random and chaotic and nothing at all matters because we are just here to fuck, reproduce and die...but I can't believe that either.

If life is like a choose your own adventure and where at each point we come across a fork in the road, are the possible choices for us already written and we just pick the right path within a certain parameter or are all infinite possibilities at all times always open to all of us?

I wonder about the different forks in the road that I have encountered (I am old enough to know there have been a great many) and I wonder about who that 16 year old M turned into when she said yes that time when I actually said no?  I wonder about M who turned down the temporary teaching job she was offered and what she is doing now?  I wonder about M who actually stayed in London when I came back.  Who are these other Ms?  How many hundreds of thousands of manifestations and possibilities of her exist now and how many more are there to come?  What I wonder most of all is which of her is truly authentic and which of her am I (if any)?

I'm beginning to fear that the best manifestation of M disappeared somewhere down a fork in the road long, long ago and I lost her completely.

Labels: constellations, contemplation, it doesn't help that the main character shares my name, life, life and art, musings, science, theatre, thoughts, wonderings

posted by M at 12:07 am 8 comments