Chapter 2 - 'Librettising' Astrophysics to create The Flowering Desert

2.1 Introduction

2.4.b The Flowering Desert as Comedy

Having read several creation stories and before writing the libretto itself, I wrote a short story which I would be able to use as source material (see Appendix AP 1.2). I wanted to make sure that this work was not a tragedy, as many of the themes of the work involve discovery and positive change. Ultimately the story is a mixture of comedy and romance which adheres to the comic principles of hierarchical change. To do this I sought to employ some of the traditional elements of comedy which are commonly present in opera buffa. Northrop Frye describes these principles as:

Thus, the movement from pistis to gnosis, from a society controlled by habit, ritual bondage, arbitrary law and the older characters to a society controlled by youth and pragmatic freedom is fundamentally, as the Greek words suggest, a movement from illusion to reality. Illusion is whatever is fixed or definable, and reality is best understood as its negation: whatever reality is, it's not that. Hence the importance of the theme of creating and dispelling illusion in comedy: the illusions caused by disguise, obsession, hypocrisy, or unknown parentage. (1957: 169)

The dispelling of the illusion through a youthful and rebellious transgression is reflected in the discovery of the TRAPPIST-1 system and experienced by both the characters of the Measurer and Pantele. In our first meeting, Amaury described to us how the discovery itself was a mistake. The team had not intended to focus the telescope towards this red dwarf star, however due to technical problems the data was collected 2 weeks later than expected. This delay is what enabled Amaury to be present to experience the desierto florido (the flowering desert), but is also the reason the telescope spotted the TRAPPIST-1 system. This disruption led to a huge change in the way the galaxy is studied and explored. I decided to make use of a dual timeline in the story, one being the thoughts of the scientist on Earth, and the other being the anthropomorphised representation of the TRAPPIST-1 system as the planet TRAPPIST-1e becomes habitable. The story itself takes on the form of comedy when the Measurer’s attitudes shift from the illusory opinion that life is not possible in red dwarf systems, to an understanding that the reality could be far more complex. At this point the character of the habitable planet, Pantele, becomes independent from the system, no longer subsidiary to the star. Both the Measurer and Pantele take on a heroic role in the piece, and they would not have been able to overthrow the old hierarchy or assumptions were it not for the actions of the other characters. The flowering desert Dr Triaud experienced in the discovery of the system becomes a metaphor for the conversion of exoplanets around red dwarfs being seen as unimportant to now being viewed as potentially full of life.

The characters of Xoe and Parent Star can also be described through these further principles of the comedy mythos:

The total mythos of comedy, only a small part of which is ordinarily presented, has regularly what in music is called a ternary form: the hero's society rebels against the society of the senex and triumphs, but the hero's society is a Saturnalia, a reversal of social standards which recalls a golden age in the past before the main action of the play begins. Thus, we have a stable and harmonious order disrupted by folly, obsession, forgetfulness, "pride and prejudice," or events not understood by the characters themselves, and then restored. Often there is a benevolent grandfather, so to speak, who overrules the action set up by the blocking humour and so links the first and third parts. (Frye, 1957: 171)

Xoe can be seen as this benevolent grandfather, who helps Pantele to overrule the forceful presence of the Mother Star. The Mother Star is initially viewed as the blocking entity, due to it being a seemingly inert Red Dwarf. However, we come to realise throughout the piece that it is also necessary for our heroine’s (Pantele’s) rebellion, the desire to host life, to succeed.

I workshopped the short story (see appendix AP 1.2) with colleagues and sent it for feedback to some friends, my supervisor Prof. Gerardo Adesso, and Dr Triaud. One piece of feedback which made me question the trajectory of the story was why we see Pantele before it has become habitable and not after, as this would probably have occurred early in the planet’s formation. Indeed, if we think about the most likely moment that we as humans would be able to observe the planet, it is probable that we would be observing it long after it had become habitable. However, through the use of archetype and myth it is of great importance that this is the point at which we encounter this planet and the story. Mircea Eliade has written on the topic of time, and timelessness in mythological tales:

This mythic or sacred time is qualitatively different from profane time, from the continuous and irreversible time of our everyday, de-sacralised existence. In narrating a myth, one reactualizes, in some sort, the sacred time in which the events narrated took place. [A myth may not be told by everybody and at any time, but only under the proper ceremonies] . . . In a word the myth is supposed to happen- if one may so – in a non-temporal time, in an instant without duration, as certain mystics and philosophers conceived of eternity. (1991: 34, 57)

This also connects us to the arc of the Measurer’s thoughts and the role of the fictional system in the Measurer’s subconscious thoughts. It reflects the timelessness that exists in the instant moment of understanding, as described in the short story below:

With pricking eyes, I blinked. Within that blink I had seen it all. I suddenly knew how life could work in a world so different to ours. How life could be so full and strange in another world. “Thank you Xoe” I whispered out loud. You have reminded me I believe in life after all.

The workshops on the short story gave me more insight into the characters. These involved reading the story, discussing initial responses and reactions to the characters and narrative, and then re-reading whilst exploring new characterisations. They prompted me to convert the Mother Star into a speaking and singing role, as it had previously appeared almost as a prop or object. The responses to the story also showed me I needed to make sure the character’s intentions and psychological states were clarified from earlier on in the libretto, especially to clarify and justify the use of the dual narrative timeline. 

Knowing how an audience might respond to the tale allowed me to decide in which moments the language could become more poetical including more unknown scientific terms, and when it was important to make sure the narrative is very clear.