Chapter12.Molecola Sogni: Toward a Weightless History

Chapter 12. Molecola Sogni: Toward a Weightless History

Molecola Sogni

Copyright © 2005 by Dan Giordan

A Tuscan sky in summer is deep blue, with weightless, billowing clouds that create an effortless and dramatic backdrop. The sky contrasts with historic landscapes, cities, and monuments that sit solid and stoic, having endured generations of upheaval and change. It's as if the skies are constantly changing and evolving in a counterpoint to the landmarks, which seem unchanging and immovable.

As I started to define the direction for Molecola Sogni, I began to explore a reversal. What if the skies were fixed and immovable, and the buildings and cities were ethereal and transient? I began to push the archway photo of San Galgano from unflinching stone to shimmering weightlessness. The billowing clouds took on a heavy, gritty form beneath an ink-black sky, as if the clouds had been carved from stone and left to sit in one of the polluted city squares of Rome or Florence.

The comparison begs the basic question of what is unchanging and what is temporal. We're conditioned to see the earth's natural elements as enduring and the constructs of men as crumbling and entropic. And yet as I stood in San Galgano and so many other historic sites in Tuscany, I couldn't help but sense the residue of the countless individuals who walked within these walls. How did they live? What were they afraid of? What brought them peace? From there, it's a small jump to consider the enduring similarities: Were their desires the same as mine? These desires, longings, and hopes endure in a way that clouds and other molecular elements could never dream ofthat is, if molecules could dream.