Living Room Gathering – Moonwalk: A Mythological Perspective
April 25, 2009 | 5 PM at Intersections, 274 5th Avenue
Prelude Music: Cat Stevens “Where Do The Children Play?”
Opening Song: “Dreamer’s Song” by Phil Robinson
Welcome & Family Time
Reading: excerpt from “The Moon Walk – the Outward Journey” by Joseph Campbell (Campbell, Joseph. Myths to Live By. Arkana, AR: Penguin Compass, 1993.)
Picture: Earthrise – William Anders, 1968
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Context for Reading:
1543 – Heliocentrism! Copernicus advances theory of sun-centric system, displacing Earth
1968 – Earthrise! William Anders takes photo of Earth rising over moon during Apollo 8
1969 – Moonwalk! Neil Armstrong sets foot on the moon
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The only really adequate public comment on the occasion of the first moon walk that I have found reported in the world press was the exclamation of an Italian poet, Giuseppe Ungaretti, published in the picture magazine Epoca. In its vivid issue of July 27, 1969, we see a photo of this white-haired old gentleman pointing in rapture to his television screen, and in the caption beneath are his thrilling words: “A different night from all other nights of the world”.
For indeed that was “a different night from all other nights of the world”! Who will ever in his days forget the spell of the incredible hour, July 20, 1969, when our television sets brought directly into our living rooms the image of that strange craft up there and Neil Armstrong’s booted foot coming down…? …”All humanity,” Buckminster Fuller once said…, “is about to be born in an entirely new relationship to the universe.”
