After watching Carl Sagan’s Cosmos “remixed.” once, I’m not sure what to make of it.:

My initial reaction is one of cautious interest, mixed with doubt and unease. I also don’t know that I actually like the music/melody regardless of subject.

First, my unease... I love Carl Sagan’s work for science outreach. I grew up with a copy of his book Cosmos. His work, and those by people like Timothy Ferris, played no small part in my choice to pursue physics degrees and eventually to study science professionally. If you’re going to take his work and redisplay it, then my automatic reaction is going to be somewhat adversarial. It is up to the writer or artist to convince me that what they’re displaying is indeed going to adequately communicate his ideas and be true to his vision. If you’re going to remix Carl Sagan, then you’ve got plenty of things stacked against you in my mind.

Plus, starting from the whale-songs is a little... well, odd or disjoint. Anyhow... I can look beyond all that, if for only a single reason.

It’s not a matter of whether or not I like the music, the video, or whatever (so long as it’s not miss-representing him). I don’t need to like it. What matters is if other people like it and, upon seeing it, decide to learn something more about Sagan and his messages. If someone decides to go out and read Cosmos because they saw that video, then that’s a great success regardless of whether or not I actually like the “remix.”

I’m not really sure what to make of the music. I’ll readily admit to listening to “spacey” ambient music while driving out into the country with friends to setup a telescope on several occasions. There was even a really cool one that was largely inspired by S.E.T.I., complete with a small reading by Frank Drake. Maybe I’m too old for the Sagan music/video to appeal to me, but again, maybe that’s not the point.

After watching it a second time, I didn’t notice anything adverse with regards to taking Sagan out of context. What I did notice was more interesting, even just watching it and hearing a few of the phrases from Cosmos evoked rather powerful feelings of what it was like when I was younger and reading (or watching) Sagan. His inspirational messages still manage to touch me across all these years. When I was an undergraduate, I wanted very much to meet him, to convey my appreciation for his work to educate and inspire. Sadly he lost his battle with cancer just weeks before I was to leave to attend school in upstate NY and I never got that chance.

Anyhow, have a look at it (the whole thing, don’t just turn it off after the whale-song hooting) and meditate a bit on some of the beauty of nature.