The Opera of Stones* is a call, songs to awaken for the life in the subterraneous of Earth. The stone, the place of origin and birth, is the stage for this quest. In the stone, in its cave-like body, we find the dramas of the matter, the forces and the senses of life amid light and shadow - evocating feelings, thoughts and humanity. From the magma to the quartz, the Opera reveals transformation of all matter. From the magma to the quartz, tells how the crystal separates from the basalt, structures itself and achieves after many attempts from the contrary forces its largest power, its true form.

The crystal form represents the perfection in nature; it is a mirror and reflects the wants of men in search for transformation, creativity and expansion of consciousness. The Opera is a piece for renewing; it has the stone staged in its maximum power. To watch the stone and hear their voices is to be in touch with our origins, is to return to the imaginary of each one of us, to our own nature. The Opera brings us a possibility: to allow chaos to become order. And the Earth exhausted and devastated by the human greed to become the Renewed Earth.

 

* Author's note: Inspired by Plato's Allegory of the Cave and the Creation Myth of the Ikolen Gavião Indians of Rondonia, Brazil, the Opera of Stones, as do all myths, ties the past to the future. In doing so, it offers answers to questions that Brazil faces - how to deal with the rich mines that exist in the underground beneath the Indian nations? In 2004, while planning the international seminar Earth Gems: Aesthetic Imagination and Hospitality, (SESC press, 2010), I learned this indigenous myth about the stone and instantly found parallels with my work, we both attribute human values to the stone and the quartz. The quartz stone, the mineral, is presente in 70% of the terrestrial crust of our planet. According to the Ikolen Gavião, we are born in the stone and all speak the same language. The cosmogony of that people develops from this language of the stones, a common and universal communication that teaches us how to transform chaos into order. I saw a modern parable in this story of the mythic stone that shelters all mortal humanity and conjoins with the blue stone in the cosmos that is Earth to create renewal.