A well-known theater and film director talks about simplicity and complexity.
“I remember this phrase in different situations – private and public. It is about the fact that incredible complexity is hidden inside simplicity. For example, war is a monstrous simplification of relations between countries and people, a cavernous response to the dramaturgy of life. But this simplicity is illusory — a military conflict creates an avalanche of unpredictable consequences. In general, if you change the optics a little, the simplest things can shock or inspire. For many, thinking, the ability to imagine and create are things taken for granted. But for me consciousness is a miracle. And life, too, is an ordinary miracle. Watching a person, I try to remember that his materiality is illusory, that in fact he consists of vibrations, that is, in fact, of music. You already understood — I’m talking about the string theory, popular in the world of quantum physics. The elementary particles familiar to us from school are not balls, but vibrations of tiny strings, which, perhaps, are also non-material. But, perhaps, Einstein’s thought inspires me most of all in those moments when poetry comes. The magic of poetry, in my opinion, lies precisely in this: the recombination of simple words creates new, hitherto unprecedented meanings and impressions.
* Albert Einstein, physicist, Nobel laureate. The original phrase is: «Everything should be as simple as it is, but not simpler» (see S. Price «1001 Smartest Things Ever Said», Globe Pequot, 2005).