Midweek pick-me-up: Singularity — our cosmic belonging and the meaning of "home," in a breathtaking animated short film

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[FROM THE ARCHIVE | Singularity: Marie Howe’s Ode to Stephen Hawking, Our Cosmic Belonging, and the Meaning of Home, in a Stunning Animated Short Film]( UPDATE 2022: This poem has since inspired the magnificent [“Singularity (after Marie Howe)”]( by the young poet Marissa Davis. “We, this people, on a small and lonely planet,” Maya Angelou begins [“A Brave and Startling Truth”]( — her cosmic wakeup call to humanity, which flew into space aboard NASA’s Orion spacecraft and which opened [the 2018 Universe in Verse]( dedicated to our ecological awakening on the wings of [Rachel Carson’s courageous work](. That year, Marie Howe — one of our great living poets, who awakens the creaturely conscience of the next generation in her ecopoetry class at Sarah Lawrence College — [premiered]( a kindred poem that stilled the crowd constellating at [Pioneer Works]( before erupting into a thousand-bodied standing ovation. While inspired by Stephen Hawking (who had just returned his stardust to the universe several weeks earlier) and titled after his trailblazing work on black holes and singularities — work that shines a sidewise gleam on the origin of everything — the poem is at bottom a stunning meditation on the interconnectedness of belonging across space and time, across selves and species, across the myriad artificial unbelongings we have manufactured as we have drifted further and further from our elemental nature. Its closing line is an invocation, an incantation, ending with a timeless word of staggering resonance today: home. As we now stand on a profound precipice two years later — facing our deeply interconnected ecology of being on this shared cosmic home as we look back on fifty years of Earth Day built on Carson’s legacy, facing the most intimate meaning of home in our isolated shelters scattered across this “small and lonely planet” — the poem pulsates with a whole new meaning, as all great poems do in the veins of time. And so, as a special treat for [the 2020 Universe in Verse]( streaming on April 25 into millions of homes around this sole shared home, I teamed up with [SALT Project]( — a kindred clan of visual storytellers, who have won some hearts and won some Emmys with their soulful shorts ranging from book trailers to bird migration documentaries — to bring Howe’s “Singularity” to life in a transcendent short film, illustrated by paper collage artist [Elena Skoreyko Wagner]( and featuring original music by the heroic cellist [Zoë Keating]( who was present in atoms at the 2018 show when “Singularity” premiered and who also composed the score for [“Antidotes to Fear of Death”]( — the headlining miracle of a poem for the 2020 show. It is with exuberant joy and gratitude that I share, as a special taste of [the 2020 Universe in Verse]( this symphony of beauty and perspective, over which so many talented women have labored with so much heart and generosity of spirit. SINGULARITY by Marie Howe (after Stephen Hawking) Do you sometimes want to wake up to the singularity we once were? so compact nobody needed a bed, or food or money — nobody hiding in the school bathroom or home alone pulling open the drawer where the pills are kept. For every atom belonging to me as good Belongs to you. Remember? There was no Nature. No them. No tests to determine if the elephant grieves her calf or if the coral reef feels pain. Trashed oceans don’t speak English or Farsi or French; would that we could wake up to what we were — when we were ocean and before that to when sky was earth, and animal was energy, and rock was liquid and stars were space and space was not at all — nothing before we came to believe humans were so important before this awful loneliness. Can molecules recall it? what once was? before anything happened? No I, no We, no one. No was No verb no noun only a tiny tiny dot brimming with is is is is is All everything home Complement with an ink-and-watercolor animation of Mojave American poet Natalie Diaz’s [gorgeous poem of brokenness and belonging]( and an animated adaptation of Neil Gaiman’s [ode to women's prehistoric role in the history of the scientific method](. [Forward to a friend]( Online]( [Like on Facebook]( donating=loving Every month, I spend hundreds of hours and thousands of dollars keeping The Marginalian ([formerly Brain Pickings]( going. For fifteen years, it has remained free and ad-free and alive thanks to patronage from readers. I have no staff, no interns, not even an assistant — a thoroughly one-woman labor of love that is also my life and my livelihood. If this labor has made your own life more livable in the past year (or the past decade), please consider aiding its sustenance with a one-time or loyal donation. Your support makes all the difference. monthly donation You can become a Sustaining Patron with a recurring monthly donation of your choosing, between a cup of tea and a Brooklyn lunch.  one-time donation Or you can become a Spontaneous Supporter with a one-time donation in any amount. [Start Now]( [Give Now]( Partial to Bitcoin? You can beam some bit-love my way: 197usDS6AsL9wDKxtGM6xaWjmR5ejgqem7 Need to cancel an existing donation? (It's okay — life changes course. I treasure your kindness and appreciate your support for as long as it lasted.) You can do so [on this page](. KINDRED READINGS: [Singularity (after Marie Howe)]( * * * [The More Loving One]( * * * [Achieving Perspective]( * * * [My God, It's Full of Stars]( * * * BACK IN PERSON [The Universe in Verse 2022]( [---]( You're receiving this email because you subscribed on TheMarginalian.org (formerly BrainPickings.org). 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