Intro music
Welcome to World Ocean Radio…
I’m Peter Neill, Director of the World Ocean Observatory.
I was in a maritime museum in Rotterdam a few weeks ago, listening to esteemed colleagues narrate their accomplishments and dreams. I drifted off. To the side, there was a panel of fancy ropework, and intricacy of knots. What’s in a knot? I looked it up. And was gone into my own dreamworld of words and the ironies and relevancies of many definitions.
A knot is:
: an interlacement of the parts of one or more flexible bodies
: the lump or knob so formed
: a tight constriction
: something hard to solve
: a bond of union
: a protuberant lump or swelling in tissue
: the base of a woody branch enclosed in the stem from which it arises
: a cluster of persons or things
: an ornamental bow of ribbon
: a division of the log's line serving to measure a ship's speed
: one nautical mile per hour
: one nautical mile
: a closed curve in three-dimensional space
There is a progression of meanings in the list – from the central definition which implies both a noun and a verb, a thing and an action. The lump, so formed, is an elegant thing, even a sculpture, entwining constricted forms in an imagined, utilitarian form. A knot is a problem. A knot is a bond. A knot is a union of line, form, relation. A knot is an emotional bond. It embodies a fixing, a complicated practicality and utility. A know is a function of Nature. A knot is a work of the imagination, at once an evocation of beauty and community, and a measure of interval, speed, and distance.
A knot is a closed curve in three-dimensional space. My colleague’s presentation carried on. So many iterations and connections. As a closed curve myself, living in three dimensions, am I a knot as well? It was only a neurological jump from these thoughts to the larger, obvious metaphor: the ocean. Surely the ocean is a curved space in three dimensions. Within its fluid state, it is a dynamic of knots, as navigational vectors, circulating currents, schools of fish entangled, the cutting edges of dive turn. Surely, the ocean is an interlacement of one or more ornamental, flexible bodies; certainly, a cluster of persons or things. The ocean is the world knot, an arc in the shape of the horizon, the curl of a wave, the turn of a whale sounding.
A knot is an ultimate device, a response to a specific challenge, tied with the integrity of experience and the authenticity of knowledge. A knot is a tool by which we meet challenges and solve problems.
