we waited until the blast had passed, walked out of the shelter and then it was extremely solemn...
if the radiance of a thousand suns were to burst at once into the sky that would be like the splendor of the mighty one...
the optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds and the pessimist knows it.
-j. robert oppenheimer
we were lying there, very tense, in the early dawn, and there were just a few streaks of gold in the east; you could see your neighbor very dimly. those ten seconds were the longest ten seconds that i ever experienced.
suddenly, there was an enormous flash of light, the brightest light i have ever seen or that i think anyone has ever seen.
it blasted; it pounced; it bored its way right through you. it was a vision which was seen with more than the eye. it was seen to last forever. you would wish it to stop; altogether it lasted about two seconds.
finally it was over, diminishing, and we looked toward the place where the bomb had been; there was an enormous ball of fire which grew and grew and it rolled as it grew; it went up into the air, in yellow flashes and into scarlet and green. it looked menacing. it seemed to come toward one. a new thing had just been born...
-isidor rabi
at the instant of the explosion i was looking directly at it, with no eye protection of any kind... the grandeur and magnitude of the phenomenon were completely breath-taking.
-robert serber
we wore welder's glasses. the thing that got me was not the flash but the blinding heat of a bright day on your face in the cold desert morning. it was like opening a hot oven with the sun coming out like a sunrise.
-philip morrison
jezt komme, feuer!
-friedrich hölderlin
il y a là cendre
-jacques derrida
asche,
asche, asche.
nacht.
nacht - und - nacht.
-paul celan
tu n'as rien vu à hiroshima.
rien.
j'ai tout vu.
tout...
-marguerite duras
for the gaze of music that leaves it behind, it is rounded to a spherethat can be overviewd, as in the meantime it has already been photographed from space, not the center of creation but something minute and ephemeral. to such experience is allied the melancholy hope for other stars, inhabited by happier beings than humans. but the earth that has grown remote to itself is without the hope the stars once promised. it is sinking into empty galaxies. on it lies beauty as the refrection of past hope, which fills the dying eye until it is frozen below the flakes of unbound space the moment of delight before such beauty dares to withstand its abandonment to disenchanted nature. that metaphysics is no longer possible becomes the ultimate metaphysics.
-theodor. w. adorno
hasel and gretel
are alive and well
and they're living in berlin
she is a cocktail waitress
he had a part in a fassbinder film
and they sit around at night now
drinking schnapps and gin
and she says : hansel, you're really bringing me down
and he says : gretel, you can really be a bitch he says : i've wasted my life on our stupid legend when my one and only love was the wicked witch. she said : what is history ?
and he said : history is an angel being blown backwards into the future
he said : history is a pile of debris and the angel wants to
go back and fix things to repair the things
that have been broken
but there is a storm blowing from paradaise
and the storm keeps blowing the angel
backwards into the future．
and this storm,
this storm
is called
progress
-laurie anderson (for walter benjamin)
staring at a burning fire
isn't salvation
sympathy for the devil
isn't salvation
lucid ambiguity
isn't salvation
bla bla bla bla bla bla
isn't saltation
discovering there is no salvation
is
salvation
-bernardo bertolucci
taken from "the atomic age" video collection.
oppenheimer's aria :: ryuichi sakamoto / reference : olivier messiaen / visual : shiro takatani (dumb type)
http://www.sitesakamoto.com/oppenheim...
