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Excerpted Inspirations #247

Writer: Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
Linda Odhner, with photos by Liz Kufs
3 days ago
0 min read
A spinning bubble made up of small, multicolored bubbles, floating in space. Click the second picture below for the story.

[Charlie Armstead joins the rest of his dance troupe in the spherical “Town Hall,” part of their free-fall dance studio in orbit around earth.] But as I came through the airlock Norrey, Harry and Linda were watching Raoul make magic. He was not aware of them, of anything external, and Norrey held up a warning hand without meeting my eyes. I put my temper on hold and my back against the wall next to the airlock; the velcro pad between my shoulder blades held me securely. […] Raoul was making magic with common household ingredients. His most esoteric tool was what he referred to as his “hyperdermic needle.” It looked like a doctor’s hypo with elephantiasis: the chamber and plunger were oversized, but the spike itself was standard size. In his hands it was a magic wand. Tethered to his skinny waist were all the rest of the ingredients: five drinking bulbs, each holding a different-colored liquid. […] He speared one of the bulbs with his syringe, drew off a measured amount. Apple juice, by the color of it, admixed with water. He emptied the syringe gently, thin knuckly fingers working with great delicacy, forming a translucent golden ball that hung motionless before him, perfectly spherical. He pulled the syringe free, and the ball … shimmered … in spherically symmetrical waves that took a long time to ebb. He filled his syringe with air, jabbed it into the heart of the ball and squeezed. The bulb filled with a measured amount of air, expanding into a nearly transparent golden bubble, around which iridescent patterns chased each other in lazy swirls. It was about a meter in diameter. Again Raoul disengaged the syringe. Filling it in turn from bulbs of grape juice, tomato juice and unset lime jello, he filled the interior of the golden bubble with beads of purple, red, and green, pumping them into bubbles as he formed them. They shone, glistened, jostling but declining to absorb each other. Presently the golden bubble was filled with Christmas-tree balls in various sizes from grape to grapefruit, shimmering, borrowing colors from each other. Marangoni Flow – gradients in surface tension – made them spin and tumble around each other like struggling kittens. Occasional bubbles were pure water, and these were rainbow scintillations that the eye ached to fragment and follow individually. Raoul was drifting for air now, holding the macro-bubble in tow with the palm of his hand, to which the whole thing adhered happily. If he were to strike it sharply now, I knew, the whole cluster would snap at once into a single, large bubble around the surface of which streaks of colors would run like tears (again, by Marangoni Flow). I thought that was his intention. The master lighting panel was velcro’d to his chest. He dialed for six tight spots, focusing them on the bubble-jewel with sure fingers. Other lights dimmed, winked out. The room was spangled with colors and with color, as the facets of the manmade jewel flung light in all directions. With a seemingly careless wave of his hand, Raoul set the scintillating globe spinning, and Town Hall swam in its eerie rainbow fire. Drifting before the thing, Raoul set his Musicmaster for external speaker mode, velcro’d it to his thighs, and began to play. Long, sustained warm tones first. The globe thrilled to them, responding to their vibrations, expressing the music visually. Then liquid trills in a higher register, with pseudowoodwind chords sustained by memory-loop beneath. The globe seemed to ripple, to pulse with energy. A simple melody emerged, mutated, returned, mutated again. The globe spangled in perfect counterpoint. The tone of the melody changed as it played, from brass to violin to organ to frankly electronic and back again, and the globe reflected each change with exquisite subtlety. A bass line appeared. Horns. I kicked myself free of the wall, both to escape my own exhalations and to get a different perspective on the jewel. The others were doing likewise, drifting gently, trying to become organic with Raoul’s art. Spontaneously we danced, tossed by the music like the glistening jewel, by the riot of color it flung around the spherical room. An orchestra was strapped to Raoul’s thighs now, and it made us free-fall puppets. Improv only; not up to concert standard. Simple group exercises, luxuriating in the sheer physical comfort of free fall, and sharing that awareness. Singing around the campfire, if you will, trying out unfamiliar harmonies on each other’s favorite songs. […] Raoul tugged gently on a line, and a large expandable wire loop came to him. He adjusted it to just slightly larger than the bubblejewel, captured that in the loop, and expanded the loop rapidly at once. Those who have only seen it masked by gravity have no idea how powerful a force surface tension is. The bubblejewel became a concave lens about three meters in diameter, within which multicolored convex lenses bubbled, each literally perfect. He […] added three low-powered lasers from the sides, and set the lens spinning like the Wheel of Kali. And we danced. -Spider and Jeanne Robinson, Stardance (1977), pp. 142-145 “Free Fall Magic” artwork by Linda Simonetti Odhner, with Photoshop .gif animation by Liz Kufs

 
 
 

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