Jill Andresevic/Howard Bloom-Bloomism 1
ATTRACTION AND REPULSION
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It's time to dance the big bang tango. Hold hands. Pull together. Quickly spin away. Chase and catch each other. Then dash apart again. Hug tight, spin, and separate. Attraction and repulsion. Repeat the two. Reiterate.
[Visuals. Show tango dancers coming together chest-to-chest, rushing apart, defying each other ferociously, seducing each other with their eyes, moving from chase to spin and embrace, from the rush apart to the fierce reunions of passionate hearts.]
The Big Bang was repulsion taken to the nth degree. [Visuals. Show glowing point swelling fast then shattering, splattering its plasma far apart, bursting like a paint ball spattering after it's hit its mark].
Yet in the rush to separate, attraction showed its greed. Electrons, quarks, and photons tugged themselves together from the blast of energy.
Electrons, quarks, and photons--these were the cosmic seeds. [Visuals. Show the nanobits of leptons, quarks, and photons sucking the flares of paintball splatter into pricks of solidity]. The pinpricks rushed from their central birthing place at more than lightning speed. Despite their haste they packed together, bound by forceful needs. [Visuals--The rush to separate sweeps on, expanding the universe unimaginably. Zoom in to the micro level.] Quarks ganged up in trios…thus protons and neutrons were born. Then the protons and the neutrons gathered in groups of four. All things frantically congregate. [Visuals--Zoom out to the macro panorama. It's the awesome rush apart again.] All things frantically separate.
Three hundred thousand years later the sprint slowed down considerably. Atoms came together, drawn by inanimate need. Hectically flitting electrons felt a magnetic lure. They settled into orbit around proton-neutron cores.
[Visuals--While the foursomes-nuclei-- separate from each other at a fast but statelier pace, electrons are drawn to the billiard-ball-like clusters like moths drawn to a flame. The electrons settle in circles around the clusters that entice them so. The sight is like that of a ball of tin foil orbiting Star Wars' Death Star. One electron is an 1,800th the size of the proton to which electromagnetism mates it.] Yet even in these atoms which the force of attraction made, repulsion kept electrons ever so slightly at bay. Bound together as the parts of an atom were, they still stayed separate. [Visuals. We see the electron diffuse into an ultra-thin cloud moving around the nucleus, but rigidly keeping its distance from the nuclear surface. Perhaps a double-ended arrow shows us the distance the orbiting electron maintains.]
Then came the attractive force we know as gravity, gathering the stuff of dust, of nebulae, and galaxies. Yet even here some rebels kept their distance, stayed apart. Spinning hard in spiral arms they shunned the galactic heart. [Visuals. We see the billiard ball foursomes and their electron shells clump together in small gangs, huge mobs, then clots, and asteroids. The black lumps of all sizes and shapes gather in spiral swirls of the familiar galactic twirl around a huge dark core. An almost subliminal image of a ballerina or a female tango dancer spinning with her arms circled in front of her then moving her curled arms outward fades in and out just once over the circling stuff. The mega-knots of atoms in the spiral arms tighten into stars and ignite, filling the turning disks with dots of light.]
Three and a half billion years ago, on a planet still brand new, life came together and life did its tango too-attraction and repulsion, the dance of join-and-separate. Our foremothers were bacteria-a hugging, clinging bunch. Yet they had to move apart when it came time for lunch. Trillions squeezed together in a single colony. But every time their food ran out, they massed to march and separate, spreading to find new feed. [Visuals. A bacterial colony starts as a seething central dot, then sends out lines of explorers like the arms of galaxies. The scouting parties travel across unknown terrain, find food, then mass in rings of homesteaders, like the rings of electrons around an atom's nucleus. A familiar atom fades in almost subliminally as the ballet dancer had before. It morphs into the wisp of a galaxy and a dancer…all in a mere second or two then disappears. Meanwhile the colony pulses, sending out spiral arms, settling them in thick, concentric rings, pausing to suck the food of its new territory dry, then sending out spiral arms of new exploration parties which clot in yet more distant settled bands.]
Then came humans, tango masters incarnate. Love pulls us together, then in spats we separate. Attraction and repulsion. We do it as tribes and nations. We do it when we mate. We are the big bang's children. We are clusters of her atoms, columns of the dust she twisted around our sun. Our blood runs red with iron she forged in stars exploding after their course was run. Each cell of your hand or eye or brain is crafted from the atoms of a galaxy the big bang made. We dance the big bang tango-attract, repulse, reiterate. Love each other, fear each other, come together, argue, hate. [Visuals, many of them superimposed-the tango dancers twirling in separation, then spinning back together again; a political group chanting in unison at a rally; soldiers fighting, naked lovers mating, the male tango dancer holding his female partner, his arms circled around her, her back to him, her face turned upward toward his, their dance at its climax when they finally possess each other, a galaxy, the explosion of a supernova…or is it the big bang all over again? The final spoken lines come under the visuals.]
Love and the birth of a
universe,
What are they all about?
Attraction and repulsion.
The gathering in.
The pushing to get out.
The binding of atoms.
The breaking of hearts.
The needs that bring us together,
The needs that tear us apart.
Howard Bloom