The universe is almost what we would have to call an art making machine, an engine for the production of ever more novel forms of connectedness, ever more exotic juxtapositions of disparate elements.
Explanation:
from the lecture "Opening the Doors of Creativity", 1990.
Tonight, if I reach my hand to yours
Can you hold that hand?
I'll become you
You just have to look at my galaxies
Be showered with all those stars
I'll give you my world.
Out of all of all possible Universes, we landed in the one that broke us. The one where two halves did not make a whole and every molehill turned into a mountain. This is the Universe where in ten hundred thousand tiny ways, we were wrong for each other. It’s the one where we’re always going to be.
We shall be notes in that great Symphony
Whose cadence circles through the rhythmic spheres,
And all the live World's throbbing heart shall be
One with our heart, the stealthy creeping years
Have lost their terrors now, we shall not die,
The Universe itself shall be our Immortality!
But in the cosmos there is balm as well as bitterness, and that balm is nepenthe.
The veteran of countless battles on a thousand worlds, Chaos Knight hails from a far upstream plane where the fundamental laws of the universe have found sentient expression. Of all the ancient Fundamentals, he is the oldest and most tireless, endlessly searching out a being he knows only as "The Light." Long ago the Light ventured out from the progenitor realm, in defiance of the first covenant. Now Chaos Knight shifts from plane to plane, always on the hunt to extinguish the Light wherever he finds it. A thousand times he has snuffed out the source, and always he slides into another plane to continue his search anew. Upon his steed Armageddon he rides, wading into battle with maniacal frenzy, drawing strength from the disorder of the universe. A physical manifestation of chaos itself, in times of need he calls upon other versions of himself from other planes, and together these dark horsemen ride into battle, as unstoppable as any force of nature. Only when the last Light of the world is scoured from existence will the search be ended. Where rides the Chaos Knight, death soon follows.
You know, there's a foundational idea in string theory that the whole universe may be a hologram. Well, the holographic principle suggests that what we all experience every day in three dimensions may really just be information on a surface located at the farthest reaches of our cosmos. So it's possible that our lives are really just acting out a painting on the largest canvas in the universe.
Tonight, if I reach my hand to yours
Can you hold that hand?
I'll become you
You just have to look at my galaxies
Be showered with all those stars
I'll give you my world
Our whole universe was in a hot dense state,
Then nearly fourteen billion years ago expansion started. Wait...
The Earth began to cool,
The autotrophs began to drool,
Neanderthals developed tools,
We built a wall (we built the pyramids),
Math, science, history, unraveling the mysteries,
That all started with the big bang!
— Jennifer could conceivably encounter... her future self. The consequences of that could be disastrous.
— Doc, what do you mean?
— I foresee two possibilities. One, coming face to face with herself 30 years older... would put her into shock, and she'd simply pass out, or two, the encounter could create a time paradox, the results of which could cause a chain reaction that would unravel the very fabric of the space-time continuum and destroy the entire universe. Granted, that's a worst-case scenario. The destruction might, in fact, be very localized, limited to merely our own galaxy.
— Well, that's a relief.