Hey, everybody, I'm Elle. If I look familiar to you, it's probably because at some point, you scrolled across one of my many goofy videos about fonts or AI or the planets or whatever. One of the nerdy sundries I've put out there.
I am a literature person by trade and by training, but I love to nerd out about science, and one of the questions that keeps me up at night is: What happened before the Big Bang? So I wrote a poem about it with an assist from science communicator Hank Green, who was talking about that very topic. And he sort of said in passing this line, which really struck me as simple but powerful. So I expanded it into this poem. Here it is.
Before the Big Bang
there was no up
there was no down
there was no side to side
there was no light
there was no dark
nor shape of any kind
there were no stars or planet Mars
or protons to collide
there was no up
there was no down
there was no side to side
and furthermore, to underscore this total lacking state
there was no here
there was no there
because there was no space
and in this endless void which can’t be thought of as a place
there was no time
and so no passing minutes, hours, days
of all the paradoxes
that belabor common sense
I think this one’s the greatest
this time before events
because how did we get from nothing
to infinitely dense
from immeasurably small
to inconceivably immense?
but before we get unmoored from the question at the start
let's take a breath and marvel
at when math becomes an art
because we don't have to comprehend it
to know there was a time
when there was no up
there was no down
there was no side to side
Thank you.
(Applause)
Well, I just have one other thing I want to share with you before I go. And I'm going to invite guitarist Toni Lindgren up here to join me for this.
(Applause)
This is a song I wrote about social media, where I spend so much of my time, and I think where so many of us spend maybe too much of our time. And I wrote this about kind of the endless scroll, and I think the conscious and unconscious desire that we all might have to reach out to other human beings and make connections in the digital void, even as we're sitting alone on our devices, in our homes. And I named the song "Carl Sagan" after the great astronomer and philosopher who saw the connections between ourselves and the billions and billions of stars in the night sky that are constantly sending out their light through the void to make contact. So this is "Carl Sagan."
(Guitar music)
Hey, how are you?
Are you scrolling alone inside your room?
Is your heart good?
Or did something go and break it?
In the words of Carl Sagan,
we're all just stars and bacon.
That's not quite what he said, but it's true.
Hey, you still here?
Are you like me on this app so you can be lost and numb
in a warm bath made of content,
watching brilliant bits of nonsense
because it feels like making contact.
Maybe that's just me.
How are you? And we are billions and billions of lights
reaching out through a satellite just to know
that feeling that even when we’re cold and on our own,
we're not alone.
Not alone.
We are billions and billions of lights
reaching out through a satellite just to know
that feeling that even when we're cold and on our own,
we're not alone.
Not alone.
And hey, are you all right?
Are you scrolling alone again tonight?
You'll be fine.
Even if your heart is breaking.
You got me and Carl Sagan
and his famous postulation.
That if we’re all alone in space,
it’d be an awful waste.
So I’m just signing in to say, how are you?
(Applause)
Thank you.
(Applause)
