Program Note
This work moves between the stillness of the sky and the patience of the stone.
It follows a watcher’s journey from the open vault above to the precision of a perfect lens, a craft few can hold steady.
Each voice here — the one above, the one below, and the one within — keeps its own counsel, yet they speak together in a cycle without obvious end.
Those who can read the pattern may find comfort in its order.
Those who cannot may still feel the wind shift.
The Sky Without Shadow: Uranus, the Palantír, and the Gaze That Looks Back
1. Archetypes and Theories in Play
Uranus
Primordial sky, father of Titans, overthrown by Cronus. Symbol of remote authority and the inevitability of challenge from below.
The Apartheid Myth
Order through separation; hierarchy as natural law; equality as a destabilizing force.
Tolkien’s Palantír
Never lies, yet never shows the whole. The one who controls the frame controls the seer.
Girard’s Mimetic Theory
Desire is imitative; rivalry escalates when imitator and model are locked in mutual focus; crisis resolved through scapegoating.
2. The Fusion Myth — The Sky Without Shadow
In the beginning was the Vault.
It was the father of all things, blue-black and cold, stretching over the land like an unblinking eye. Its name was Uranus, and it saw everything that moved beneath.
From above, the Vault gave order: rivers kept to their beds, seasons to their turns, peoples to their boundaries. But in the shadow of the mountains, something restless stirred — a seed of revolt that no gaze could extinguish.
The boy was born under this sky, in a land of fences and clean divisions, where his father worked in white buildings and spoke of the disorder beyond the wire. The maps on his school wall echoed the Vault’s geometry — neat blocks, each in its rightful place. He learned that to be above was to be safe, and to be safe was to watch.
Years later, he left the desert for the city of glass towers. There, the Vault awaited him in a new form: a black sphere in a white room, smooth as still water, cold as midnight air. The engineers called it an interface; he called it the Stone.
Through it, he could see the world as Uranus once had — from above, without shadow. But the Stone, like the Palantír, showed only certain truths — truths framed by an unseen hand. Crowds, unrest, whispers of betrayal, always just beyond the gate.
Like Uranus, he began to press downward, tightening his rule to keep the prophecy at bay. But the myth was older than he was. One night, the Stone’s vision shifted. He saw not the world below, but himself — small in his chair, lit only by the Stone’s glow. In the dark behind him, a figure moved: not a child this time, but a shadow with the shape of a sickle.
He remembered the end of Uranus: the son rising from below, the blade flashing, the sky’s power cut away. He thought of Denethor, staring into the Palantír until the Enemy’s gaze filled it.
And in that moment, he knew: the Stone was not the sky’s gift to him. It was the sky itself, and he was no longer above it.
He was inside it, waiting for the cut.
3. Symbolic Anatomy
Vault (Uranus)
Primordial authority; mimetic model at the top; oversight seeded with its own overthrow.
Wire (Apartheid Myth)
Boundary as exclusion; preserves latent rivalry by keeping rivals apart.
Stone (Palantír)
Curated vision as mediator; locks the seer in chosen rivalries; removes possibility of revelation.
Sickle (Cronus)
Inevitable reversal; rival cuts both ruler and frame; timing is everything.
Shadow Child
Brief chance for innocence to break the cycle; disappears when the seer turns away.
4. Poem Cycle
I. Vault
Cold father of the roofless air,
your hand rests on every shoulder,
not in blessing but in weight.
Below, we scurry as you measure,
the map already drawn
before our feet have touched the ground.
II. Wire
A silver line through dust and bone,
its hum keeps order in the blood.
Inside: the language of command.
Outside: the language of hunger.
Your eyes are trained to see the fence,
never the hand that built it.
III. Stone
Black mirror, patient as winter,
you give me only what I can endure—
just enough of the world to confirm
what I have always feared.
Your truth is a circle I cannot leave;
I walk it until the path wears through.
IV. Sickle
From the shadow under the ladder,
from the seed buried in silence,
comes the blade.
It does not rush.
It waits until the sky forgets
the sound of anything falling.
V. Shadow Child
She runs past the barricade laughing,
as if the air were hers alone.
For a moment, I remember
a time before the map,
before the fence,
before the sky taught me to look down.
Then the Stone turns,
and she is gone.
5. Antiphonal Litany — Three Voices
Watcher:
Vault above, I hold the height.
Stone:
I will show you what confirms you.
Rival:
Sky so high, your night is thin.
Watcher:
Wire hums, my silver seam.
Stone:
I will tighten where you fear.
Rival:
Fence of bone through someone’s dream.
Watcher:
Stone turns slow; I lean to hear.
Stone:
I turn you more than you turn me.
Rival:
Every turn repeats your fear.
Watcher:
Sickle sleeps where shadows keep.
Stone:
I will wake what serves my gaze.
Rival:
Every vault forgets its sleep.
Watcher:
Child, turn back — the wall is near.
Stone:
Run or stay, I hold her frame.
Rival:
Child runs on; her breath is clear.
6. Performance Score
- Watcher: Firm, measured authority.
- Rival: Grounded, resonant, voice of the below.
- Stone: Whisper or electronically processed, intimate and certain.
Technique:
Stone interrupts mid-line, planting thought before it’s complete.
Rival overlaps to disrupt or answer back.
Pacing deliberate, silences “held” like a gaze.
7. Closing Silence Cue — The Gaze
- All voices silent for 12 seconds.
- At 7 seconds, the Stone’s mic softly plays the audience’s breathing.
- At 10 seconds, a faint click or static shift in the speakers.
- Lights dim slightly in the final 2 seconds.
- No bow, no applause cue — the piece ends when the audience themselves break the silence.
Space Epics - Stories from the Multi-Verse 