Appendix 1 - The Flowering Desert Creative Process
In this appendix I have chosen materials, reflections or transcriptions from key pieces of work, or workshops, that were carried out during the creative and performative process of developing the opera The Flowering Desert.
Appendix 1: The Flowering Desert Creative Process
AP 1.1 Cycle 1: Jan-April 2020
AP 1.2 Cycle 1: Short Story - The Flowering Desert
AP 1.3 Cycle 1: Online Workshops and Outcomes April 2020-February 2021
AP 1.4 Cycle 1: Exploration through Performance and Film: March - June 2021
AP 1.5 Cycle 2: Leading to the Performances in May 2022
AP 1.2 Cycle 1: Short Story - The Flowering Desert
I am lying on La Silla in the midnight Atacama, listening to the wind rush through the ice of the barren trees. A shower of percussion speckles my ears. Even here, one of the driest places in the world, chaotic weather sends a flood that fills the land with flowers. Every few years a rug of purple life appears out of something that seemed dead. I breathe in remembering the scent. It still seems to linger. This is our world, our system.
I should be working tonight, taking readings, but there are some extra colleagues with us working on the readings. So tonight I have off. I could have stayed at the base but when else am I going to be able to watch the stars all night without the observatory’s lens? I don’t want to close my eyes.
We’ve been asked to watch a system in the Aquarius constellation. Really, I don’t think there is much hope for life there. It’s a red dwarf and nothing like the Sun. Our turbulent, fast paced, destructive Sun. But we’ll look anyway. After all, isn’t that the job of a good scientist?
*****
Approximately 40 lightyears from La Silla and the Atacama, the accelerating Xoe flies. Xoe is a comet, flashing with the brilliance of a magnesium ember. This furious and effervescing messenger knows a secret. As with all celestial messengers, containing this secret gives it a great and mysterious power.
The red star stands. It glows with a vivid brightness perceptible when sensing that heat beyond colour. It is parent, child and carer - a kind and endless source. Time spins around it, an axis of the eternal. It is young but much older than most. It is common and yet barely observed. But there is plenty of time and space left for it to show its true self. To accumulate possibilities then shed them all.
Beyond this star lie seven orbiting bodies, each born with a different set of rules. One in particular is of interest to Xoe on its journey past the star. The experience of these planets couldn’t be more different to that of the star. One side stays in perpetual day while the other stops in a frozen night. This story is only about planet E named Pantele. For Pantele, this has created a particularly difficult problem.
*****
I close my eyes. The air is cold. Luckily I bought a blanket for warmth, woven by the Atacameños. I can still see the sky above me inside my eyelids. Suddenly I have a fear. Maybe life doesn’t matter. Maybe it's not worth searching.
*****
“Someone is watching you”
Xoe sings as it hurtles towards Pantele.
“Someone is watching you. Do you want to know why.”
Awaking from the scorching day Pantele sighs. Coriolis winds sweep across its face and whip the sand up and off the stony features. As if it stepped into a cold shower the surface of the planet retracts and moans as the sky pulls the heat away and up.
“Good day Xoe, Good day. It feels like an age since you were here. And yet I hardly see you. Your brightness only shortly outshines my parent star. What news do you have?”
“I have great news indeed! Someone watches you Pantele. Beings made from something like dust. They watch and wait. They search the sky for possibilities. And they have stopped to look at you. Pantele - they are watching you!”
“What can you mean Xoe?” Thinking to itself slowly with rising excitement. The dark and cold winds start to blow even faster and remind Pantele of something it already knew. Something it saw behind it somehow. The world there is so huge and dark and open. And someone is watching me! “Someone is interested in ME”
“Couple of problems . . .”
Xoe cheekily remarks.
“They are looking for life like them. You do not have conditions for life at all yet. Let alone a life like them. Sadly they will soon be gone. But nice to know they noticed you for a little bit. You can be another dot on their 2-D representations of the universe. Goodbye.”
And with that last remark Xoe turned to torment another planet. Such was the life of a comet. Those balls of ice and dust which burn fast until they crash into some stone or other. It might as well stir up the system as much as it could before that happened. At least that way it knows it will have left some kind of mark before it dies.
“You aren’t interesting enough to be watched.” Pantele talked to itself as it spun around its parent. Lost in its own self-doubt it almost wanted to cry. “If only I could change myself somehow. And become something else. Something other beings want to see. If only I could project what they are looking for. They might even reach out to be with me.”
*****
What is all that commotion? Behind me at the observatory I hear some screaming. No - cheering? I get up and gather my blanket to head back to the base. Looking over my shoulder at the desert I am suddenly filled with a deep and wonderful nostalgia. As I breathe in one more time I feel like I can take in the history of the land. The oceans that used to be here. All the different creatures that have come and gone flying round and round past the sun. I am standing on plates balancing on oceans of lava, flying around a star. Almost immediately this sensation is succeeded by intense sadness as I remember humans are not all there are. The flowers showed me that.
*****
“Mother, can you hear me? Mother?” Pantele calls to the Star with a quiet desperation. It knows it has to do something quickly. It needs to make use of this opportunity. Who knows when it will get this attention again? How often does someone take an interest in a silent and timeless red dwarf system? It is one of so many. Chance will not be repeated. But how can it make a suitable world for life?
“Xoe help! I need your advice. Tell me what to do to gain this life you speak of? How can I make myself better?”
“I am glad you asked!” answered Xoe. “You must first become something that life finds comfortable. And second you need to find a way to welcome life in.”
Pantele answered “Life wouldn’t be comfortable within me?
“You see your mother - the star. It is so much larger and more powerful than you. It has been stretching you. Just a little bit.” Pantele started to wince and wriggle. “But don’t worry -” Xoe added “this stretching was good. You probably noticed it causing some motion and bubbling under your crust. You need to continue stretching towards her. It’s going to help. The more you stretch the more you can protect yourself against her harmful violet glare.”
Pantele pondered. “So I must allow my mother to tug and contort me. To warm my tides and help them change my shape. To make my skin more broken and underneath active and sore? And only through this can I become something that protects from the harmful winds she is prone to?”. Pantele thought this over more and more. It seemed so contrary, so opposite, so unavoidable.
Then all at once Pantele heard another voice. It was carried in a storm and sounded both like it was coming from without and within Pantele:
“You cannot see it but I can - the universe is so wide. Seize this moment. Take the chance to let us be known. We want to bloom!”
This voice was not unfamiliar to Pantele. It had heard it before but often tried to block it out. In fact this voice was the shadow of Pantele. The place beyond the terminator (the line of eternal sunset). Without it would never be in its fullest form.
“Xoe wait!”, screeched Pantele. “I’ll do it. But what of the other thing?”
*****
Finally back at the observatory I was struggling to see the data. Everyone was busy bustling around the screens. I felt like I was trying to view the Mona Lisa at the Louvre. “It's unbelievable! How lucky we looked right now! What were the chances!”. Finally my colleagues stepped back and I pushed my way through. There they were - clear as the stars I had just been looking at. Transits. And not just one. I didn’t dare blink. I didn’t want to stop looking. A system - a multiple planet system. And one that was nothing like ours.
*****
“The other thing? That one is more dangerous.” Xoe spoke this sentence to the distance and looked out beyond the system.
As Xoe talked Pantele let out a loud and fearful wail. “I’m scared Xoe.”
“But you shouldn’t be. You have been doing this all along. I have watched you be stretched out and mutilated since both of us were born. You may have not noticed, and been blinded by your star. But don’t let the knowledge of your world scare you.
Pantele let out another loud wail, although this one ended in a softer cry.
“Be brave. You will be able to snatch the tools for life from your star and the system around you.” Xoe tried to comfort Pantele. But Xoe was also scared. Xoe knew that in order for Pantele’s world to be completely ready they would have to collide. Xoe was carrying all the water and molecules Pantele needed to complete an atmosphere.
“Come closer Xoe!” called Pantele. “I need you near me to help me through my mission.” Xoe’s path curved and it started to get closer to Pantele. As it got closer to Pantele Xoe saw their paths, their future, inextricably intertwined. Just a short time more and Xoe would be scattered across the surface of Pantele.
“Eeeaarghhhooooooo” Pantele was still pushing and stretching and changing. “I think it’s starting Xoe. I’m beginning to see a glow in my periphery. There is a rising wave - a coloured vortex. And my surface feels less seared and sore. Only my insides are still moving, but I can feel all the strength is born from within now.”
“My dear Pantele - that’s it you’ve found it! And now for one last wound . . .”
And with these words Xoe catapulted with assurance and speed, driving itself purposefully towards the newly proud Pantele.
“Xoe what are you doing? You do not need to be so close. Xoe wait . . . Be careful . . . Slow down . . . Xoe!”. As Pantele looked out in shock and wonder Xoe sped up. It almost seemed like Xoe was being pulled faster and faster towards it. But with certainty and a kind of wild and fantastic joy Xoe shouted out “It’s time for life to begin!”
With a burning speed and smarting plunge, Xoe smacked into the side of Pantele, giving out a resounding punch. The cold and hot winds that flew forward and back across the terminator (that line of eternal sunset) were flung away and thrown higher. With them they carried the splintered and shattered Xoe.
Pantele - silent now and in even greater shock, started to feel a warming density surrounding it. A sense of peace and softness spread around the circumference from sunset, to scorching day, to sunrise and icebound night. Pantele could hear Xoe surround it in a soft and comfortable hum. Now, in a moment of peace, it knew it was ready for life!
“Thank you mother and thank you Xoe” replied Pantele.
*****
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.
AP 1.2.a Feedback from the short story workshops and readers
In order to make best use of the story I sent if for feedback to some friends, my supervisor Gerardo Adesso, and Dr Amaury Triaud. Key feedback from the email responses I received can be found below.
AP 1.2.a.i Gerardo’s response below:
The main question I have is about the comet itself, how can it maintain a connection all the way from Earth to Pantele, and know the humans were watching it. As the astronaut thanks Xoe at the end, maybe the dynamics is as follows: Xoe passes over Earth during that night when he is watching the stars in the desert and pondering on the meaning of life, the night while the colleagues at the observatory discover the exoplanet system. Then Xoe keeps travelling away from Earth and towards that system (comets have very long orbital periods so it’s not unlikely that it covers the 40 light years distance), and it finally reaches there and does the impact etc. So this would mean the two parts of the story are happening in very distant timelines: life on Pantele will begin much later than the moment the humans discover it with the telescope. Is that right?
If this is the case, am I right that this bit “With pricking eyes I blinked. Within that blink I had seen it all.” means implicitly that Xoe was just passing over the desert in that moment? In fact, the astronomer thanks it in the end.
Clearly Xoe’s role is fictionalised to embody life itself or, as they say in Jurassic Park, “life finds a way”. But I appreciate that you really don’t stray away from the basic science (compared to, say, entanglement which has some leaps of faith… yet again, even Interstellar who was written by Nobel Prize winning physicist Kip Thorne, featured artistic renditions of a black hole, so it’s nothing to be ashamed of :D).
(Adesso, 2020)
AP 1.2.a.ii A friend (and scriptwriter) responds via email:
-It's very visual - it's clear that the imagery you're envisaging is very vivid
-The idea of exploring themes of life through the eyes of both living things and inanimate celestial objects is an interesting one, there's lots of potential in that both dramatically and philosophically
-The Atacama setting is great, and contrasting the life of a scientist with the life of the things they're observing, again, has a lot of potential
Things I wasn't sure about:
-I found the layout a bit hard to follow. I don't mind the technique of jumping between places and voices, but in something so short, and without more set-up at the start, it was hard to keep track of each bit, who's voice was speaking, and which setting I was in (this applies more to it as a short story, than as the basis for a script)
-The prose didn't have much in the way of narrative progression or sequential description - even though there were some very visual things, they didn't come in a clear sequence that created images in my mind. So it was difficult to conjure in my imagination what I was supposed to be seeing, and feeling
(Abramsky, 2020)
AP 1.2.a.iii Dr Amaury Triaud’s response:
Hi Roxanne,
Thanks a lot for the current story. It sounds quite good so far. A couple of reactions.
- I really liked how you weaved the discovery and life in the Atacama along with the planetary system.
- comets can provide more than an atmosphere/water. By entering into the atmosphere they create gases, notably Hydrogen Cyanide (HCN), which if it is irradiated by UV, particularly during a flare (and we know TRAPPSIT-1 does that), then HCN will transform into another molecule, called formaldehyde, which is an important prebiotic molecule. Formaldehyde is what chemist call a precursor to nucleobases (which make the letters of the DNA), as well as some lipids (which make the membranes of our cells), and can lead to a proto metabolism which what powers our cells. Much of that research remains very new and linking it together is rather speculative, but it can help your comet and your star to create life together.
- At the moment the story starts you mention planet E, but it does not seem that necessary since TRAPPIST-1 is not mentioned either.
- from the story it is not so clear why life is not there to begin with.
- Is there scope to make the star a character too? Both Xoe and the star have negatives to bring to Pantele, but at the right time and right conditions, then both can be very positive.
(Triaud, 2020)
AP 1.2.a.iv Short story workshops with students
The first workshop was with Oliver Farrow (Composer), Simon Paton (Composer), myself and Daniel. The second was with Hannah McDonald (singer), Maja Pluta (violinist), Laura Farre Rozada (pianist and PhD student), Daniel and myself.
During the first workshop we read through the story a couple of times and discussed how everyone responded to the characters differently. We also discussed where the weakest points were in the story. We then read through the sections of the story that are in dialogue. Oliver felt that Pantele was a very moany and grouchy character, and male. Pantele was thought to maybe be wearing pyjamas. Xoe would be dressed like a high-powered businessman in a suit with a briefcase. We discussed the addition of the character of the star itself, maybe as a group of people in a chorus, or also the possibility of it just being an object, or even an instrument. The majority of the participants felt that it would be better to have the star as a character with performer or performers. We discussed how the two timelines work and whether it is clear that the astronomer is taking a journey as well during the piece. I questioned the participants on whether it was sufficient for the TRAPPIST planetary system story to be in the mind of the astronomer or if this was a form of narrative cheat. The participants disagreed that this was problematic and encouraged me that it would work for this to be the case.
In the second workshop we went much further into discussing the individual characters. Whilst reading it Hannah found that a lot of what happened with Xoe and Pantele was almost of a sexual nature - and if not that then it certainly represented a coming-of-age idea. Pantele was less moany and annoying in this reading of the character. She (for here she was a girl) was trying to generate a sense of self outside of the confines of her home and Xoe would help her do this. There is a lot of anxiety and innocence in the way Hannah read this character. Xoe also came across initially as a fast paced, crazy older sister on business trips around the galaxy. However later we discussed the possibility of Xoe being a more laid back and wise traveller type, almost as a grandmother or guru.