...OF IMAGINARY BEINGS, a map of the endless Labyrinth of imaginative speculation and its contents, which by some may be considered an amusing tribute to the human gift for seeing the invisible-- and debating whether or not it whistles (we aver it does). Or, a curious but unoriginal compilation of already-told tales, somehow still worthy of serious consideration: bit by bit, like the minute accretion of the Oyster, growing a pearl in secret darkness, this presentation adds disparate elements to its mix to create in its gestalt an entity never before experienced.

In "THE BOOK OF SAND," Jorge Luis Borges describes a volume of inconceivably thin leaves, in which no page is the first and no page the last, so that wherever you open it there is a different story, written in various indecipherable scripts. The narrator becomes obsessed with this extraordinary object and ultimately horrified: "I realized that the Book was monstrous. It was no consolation to think that I... was no less monstrous than the Book."

The short story echoes what is probably Borges's single most famous fiction, "The Library of Babel" (1941), which depicts a library of Astronomical size-- containing everything that ever has been or could be written-- but in which meaning is elusive. The later work, however, written towards the end of the author's life, has a nightmarish quality that is less apparent in the earlier story.

Falling between these two is THE BOOK OF IMAGINARY BEINGS, a compendium of brief, almost stark descriptions and stories about fantastic animals from many older texts and sources, including the Bestiaries of Medieval Europe and their classical antecedents, Chinese and Indian myth, folk tales, the legends of indigenous peoples and the minds of such writers as C.S. Lewis, Kafka and Poe. First published in 1957, at the very time when (as Borges later explained) the vision that had gradually been failing him since birth had deteriorated to the point where he could no longer read or see what he was writing, this quasi-Cryptozoological chiaroscuro, which we draw upon during the show, is one of Borges's great creations.

In it, the Inventory, from start to finish, includes the Upland Trout, which nests in trees and is a good flier but scared of water, as well as the Goofang, which swims backwards to keep the water out of its eyes. What are we to make of the Strong Toad, which has a shell like that of a turtle, glows like a firefly in the dark, and is so tough that the only way to kill it is to reduce it to ashes? In the section "Fauna of Mirrors", we discover what looks like a joke on erudition of (Tristram) Shandy-esque proportions: "In one of the volumes of the Lettres édifiantes et Curieuses that appeared in Paris during the first half of the 18th century, Father Fontecchio, S.J., planned a study of the superstitions and misinformation of the common people of Canton..."

Our study is also populated with creatures that, however bizarre, are upon examination, far from absurd. Notable are the various Dragons of east and west (like Chrysophylax in our last show), creatures of enormous power, but uncertain significance. In truth, we are ignorant of the meaning of the Dragon as we are ignorant of the meaning of the Universe-- but there is something in the Dragon's image that appeals to the human imagination; it is a Necessary monster...

Consider the show something that holds, as it were, a mirror up to dreaming. But where, we wonder, do pleasant dreams shade into nightmares, or those from the past into those of the future? Which dreams are wholly fantastical and which are visions or distortions of what is real-- or has the potential to be so?

It might, for example, to certain receptive listeners, remind them of what is beyond Dream – the real forms of living creatures that exist without human agency. Borges himself acknowledged as much: "Anyone... will soon find out that the zoology of dreams is far poorer than the zoology of the Maker."

For we who live in the light of what Paleontology, evolutionary biology and genetics are revealing about living forms, our response to the real may – will, if we are truly awake – be one of astonishment and wonder at life's inventiveness. Even ordinary-seeming animals are marvelous in the light of Evolution. Extraordinary examples make those in the pages of a Medieval Bestiary seem poor indeed. Compared to the Leafy Sea Dragon and the Sea Slug (Elysia chlorotica)-- which photosynthesises with genes stolen from the algae it eats, and is as green as a leaf-- the mythical Barometz, or vegetable lamb of Tartary, might seem to the uninitiate to be a dull affair.

It is our thesis that the contemplation of Natural History allows us to marvel at our place in the Universe. As Charles Darwin wrote early in his career, "If, as the poets say, life is a dream, I am sure in a voyage these are the visions which serve best to pass away the long night."

We will advise that the realm of this lore is anything but tiresome whimsy, and casts in fact the looming shadow of the Future – a phantasmagoric counterpart to the Anthropocene, the epoch in which humans may be transforming life as radically as anything since the Cambrian explosion about 530 million years ago. A global rise in average temperature of 4 degrees Centigrade-- or more-- by the end of this century, which many scientists now consider quite likely, will lead to a disruption of the biosphere. Such a rise in temperature created the greatest of all extinctions at the close of the Permian. Similarly, one of the biggest extinction events in the history of life may be unfolding at this protracted (to us) geological instant. At the same time, however, we appear to be on the cusp of the creation of new forms of non-human Life, as well as new ways of being human (children with DNA from three parents, reproduction without the union of male and female gametes, greatly extended lifespans and other neo-blasphemies). Such endeavors may open up countless new ways to imagine and to be.

The Kabbalists sought to rearrange the letters of the ineffable Names of God in their attempts to make new life. Today, there are those who are tinkering with the near endless potential variations in the letters of DNA. How hopeful will the resulting Monsters be? How much light, or darkness, will they bring? "The light which puts out our eyes," wrote Thoreau, "is darkness to us."

And so, in our own way, we toss stone after stone into the subterranean caverns of the reader's mind. Come with us along passageways and around corners to reveal strange shapes and images, some of which may precede and outlast anything conceived. If we are attentive, the reverberations can help us trace the dimensions of those spaces. In the midst of Darkness, we glimpse pulses of Light-- and are then engulfed in sudden dazzling floods of it.

Three hours, including archival remixes and poetic recitations in the usual manner.