On Wednesday, my lovely girlfriend and I embarked on a journey to Seattle’s beautiful 5th Avenue Theater to see the live taping of Radiolab (not to be confused with Radiohead) – a now Peabody Award-winning NPR show based out of NYC and staple background soundtrack to my house. The topic du jour was symmetry and over about two hours our hosts, Jad Abumrad and Robert Krulwich, talked about various instances of the principle of symmetry out there in the big bad world. It was mystifying.

Perhaps adding to the effect was the fact that our seats were in the balcony, about 15 rows up, giving us a fantastic sense of the stunning interior of the theater. During the performance the house lights were down, but I still got a haunting sense of the enormous Chinese pillars on either side of us. We were, fittingly, almost dead center-stage as we gazed down in a concentrated effort to remain present in the experience. The funny thing about seeing Radiolab live is that, unlike seeing most other live theater where the audience becomes fully engaged in what is happening onstage, the nature of the show encourages its audience to take mental detours and I often found myself deep in the midst of my own thought-tangents. I had to continually refocus my attention on the two small figures under the follow-spot — what seemed like miles away through a tunnel of darkness. I was continually wavering in my engagement with what was happening on the stage below and what was going on in the world of my own private experience.

Funny thing about sitting in a theater crowd is that it is comprised of hundreds — or thousands — of people who all sink anonymously into the darkness and give up their autonomy in order to participate in a greater experience as a whole body. That action, however, doesn’t interfere with each audience members’ ability to have a unique and personal experience or to feel personally touched by what goes on onstage. I find this a lot at concerts where a band I adore will play a song that is very important to me, but when I look around, others in the crowd look bored, or are chatting away to their friends. Everybody experiences uniquely, yet as a collective body.

I was considering this juxtaposition as Jad and Robert were telling the story of a man who found his self-perception flawed because every concept of his physical identity came from looking in mirrors, which showed him a reversed image of himself. If you have never tried this before, study a photo of yourself. I bet it looks different than what you are used to seeing in a mirror. For the more technically inclined, take a photo of yourself, or any other person, really, and flip it horizontally. Compare it with the original. It’s really strange. For illustrative purposes:

This is the same photo with the side on the right mirrored. This is what I see in the mirror. For the most part the two are similar, but I think it is undeniable that I look quite a bit more angry in the mirrored photo. There are plenty of reasons why this is the case, many of which have to do with nearly imperceivable muscle movements that we — and dogs, strangely — use to communicate non-verbally. The fact still remains that there is a noticeable difference between how I know myself and how others know me, visually at least.

But isn’t this an example of asymmetry? Yes. Isn’t that wonderful? We are all going through life with this sense of fragmented symmetry, but the really cool thing is that we are all doing it. Every one of us has this same inherent perceptual flaw and that makes us all, at least in this sense, strangely symmetric. Strange, eh?

On that note, I decided to dust off the old Photoshop skill set and throw together a symmetry-inspired post to kick off April. And, true to form, since I took this photo in my wonderfully sun-filled backyard (about an hour ago) it has started to rain. Well played, Seattle, well played.