Editorial - Energy

Hello Dear Reader, and welcome to Issue 7 of Consilience.

This issue is devoted to the myriad and multitudinous forms of energy.

Energy is ubiquitous in nature. The universe would not exist without it. And we would not exist without the universe. In both the scientific and artistic realms, it was the investigation into what energy is that led to some of the greatest revolutions of the 20th century. It was then that we realised energy transferred ‘quanta’ or discrete packets. No longer in the continuous sense of an electromagnetic wave or in classical physics, but with a novel assumption: a whole universe revealed beyond our sense perceptions.

Here, the thermodynamics of a body follows specific rules, like entropy (the disorder of energy states) increasing over time. If you want to move a train, you need energy. If you're going to use a computer, you need energy. If you're going to have a thought, energy is required in the neural network of your mind. We are energy. The perpetual vibration of atoms and matter, cells and neurons, food and movement, continued onward from eternity to eternity. Moments are integrated. Verses are written. Upon the stones of memory, history is spilled.

All life is the flow and transformation of energy. All art is the flow and transformation of life. So here we are again, at the Möbius strip of creation. The poetry of nature comes from these idyllic interactions, too, from the great cathedral of being. Like the poetry of the human species, energy is never created nor lost but only transformed from one form to another. The poet transforms the soul and life stories, integrating the beautiful and ugly and sorrowful and loving, into verse. Whether it be the movement of dancers in a ballet, the dance of the pen upon the page, or the merging of cells and the growth of the cosmos, there lies energy and its movement. A poem is a kind of ballet, with symphonic form and metaphor and illuminating lines.

It is the soul crying only to be heard. The painting with words submerges the reader into a distance so close that one doesn't realise it until the poem is read, stored, and transferred. Only then is the energy of our minds and souls reformed into something new—something courageous and profound.

In this issue, you will find poetry and artwork that touches upon the many faces of energy and hence the many hearts of the profound. We hope you enjoy these pieces as much as we have.

The Consilience Team