La Voz de Galicia – February 5, 2020 →
At the end of the pandemic’s first wave, the first thing I did was go to the bookstore. During the confinement, I had written down the titles of a dozen books I wanted to read, among them, Irene Vallejo’s El infinito en un junco (Infinity in a Reed). And once I opened it, I could not put it down because I thought fascinating her way of reminding us of the reasons the humanities and the sciences should go hand in hand, or the importance of dialogue to learn to be–all of this through a narrative as amusing as it is edifying about the origin of books in the ancient world.
This week, I read an interview with the author where she reflected on the idea that «when science and philosophy, medical research and cultural creation, walked hand in hand, humanity reached amazing heights in terms of progress and wellbeing.» And I thought that today, that dialogue is needed more than ever in our relationship with what is happening and our educational system.
My life changed when eight years ago, I began to work in the intersection between sciences and humanities. Everything started by chance: a story about the loss of memory led me to create a musical composition that became the foundation for an educational proposal about the role of arts in society. My attempt to understand and embrace the loss of memory from different perspectives ended up opening doors to work on a different way of understanding the arts as an axis that connects not only disciplines, but also conversations as complex as the individuals who engage in them.
In that place, in between, I learned to listen and then I found my place. Thanks to the constant dialogue with those who know what I don’t know, I find answers to questions I had not yet formulated.
A new reader here, one who had head trauma and memory loss in his 20’s. I worked back with cranial-sacral, but I was already deeply involved in my own artistic endeavors in theater and music, which has been now a lifetime career. The demands and discipline of those arts gave me an immeasurable leg up on getting my mind and perception back, but as a former dancer, I also had an enormous sense of the body’s actual capacities in both the scientific and the visceral.. That feels like somewhat of an intersection of science and the arts, and it helped me heal. I will be fascinated to see where your journey takes you. Thank you for sharing your thoughts.