Project: A new era

03 IMMENSITY

Lost between the sand and sky,
In a hoodie while the frozen winds go by;
Countless stars around me blaze at night,
Like a tangled knot of living lures alight.
Seated on the edge of the world,
Wandering through deepest space unfurled,
A shiver of intensity,
I feel Immensity.
We fool ourselves that we are special, lone,
That we can live forever on our own;
Yet the Milky Way seems infinite,
And elsewhere other life may pulse within it.
Seated on the edge of the world,
Wandering through deepest space unfurled,
A shiver of intensity,
I feel Immensity.
Hot deserts stretching farther than the eye,
And mountains that seem close enough to sky;
Yet Earth appears no more than one small ball
When seen from some far star beyond us all.
Seated on the edge of the world,
Wandering through deepest space unfurled,
A shiver of intensity,
I feel Immensity.
As theologians did in days of old,
We make Gaia Creation’s heart and soul;
And refuse to think that somewhere else may rise
Intelligent life beneath uncharted skies.
Seated on the edge of the world,
Wandering through deepest space unfurled,
A shiver of intensity,
I feel Immensity.
Still I stand and stare into the vast,
In this hoodie where no warmth can last;
A black ocean dazzles all my sight,
Like a pearl within a shell of endless night.

A hoodie may be enough against the cold of night, but not against the cold of the universe.

Beneath a sky too vast ever to be fully understood, man becomes small again. Not humiliated, but restored to his true proportions. The sand, the stars, the darkness, the Milky Way: everything seems to remind him that the centre of the world is never where we imagine it to be.

Immensity is a contemplation suspended at the edge of the planet. The gaze begins on Earth, crosses deserts, mountains and constellations, then loses itself in that black ocean which dazzles more powerfully than any light.

And even our certainties begin to fracture: the belief that we are alone, special, necessary; the ancient temptation to place Gaia at the centre of Creation; the presumption that life has chosen us alone.

There is no definitive answer in this song. There is a shiver.

The shiver that comes when the sky ceases to be a backdrop and becomes a question. When the Earth, seen from afar, is no longer home, border or possession, but a fragile pearl inside an infinite shell.

And in that immeasurable silence, for one instant, we feel Immensity.