There’s a legend - one from far before my time.

Starax Statosky created a wand. This wand had almost mythical powers and was sold in a limited edition. From it, the gates to Heaven could open up.

A flying pig might appear.

The wand responded to over 150 words (and was beautifully documented here with a slideshow here).

Now, the thing is…Starax died. But his spirit returned as Light Waves, and Light Waves has become deeply involved with the work of Rezzable (a mystery of its own, but that’s another story).

The return of the wand maker was discovered by several astute observers and reported, but I’ll direct you to Not Possible IRL (partly because I love the site and it’s a great story).

Rezzable creates beautiful environments. The Greenies is perhaps THE premiere of example of an exploration sim (with traffic well over 23,000). And Light Wave has brought incredible talent to the table.

Black Swan is a sim that acts primarily as an exhibit of work. I return there time and again - for inspiration, reflection, appreciation, and maybe even some serenity from the mad dash world of SL (hmmm…although the part where you scream in terrified pain falling into a pit of lava tends to break the spell a bit).

I visited it again with Bobby.

I like this picture because it captures a feeling - contemplation, the mood of the sim, which is structured for both directed exploration and awe:

A highlight of the sim is one of the best examples of sculpted prims (and mega-prims for that matter) in SL:

Light Wave didn’t arrive in SL as a wand maker. He didn’t know how to create a statue. Or later, how to sculpt a prim. But Second Life became a platform for Starax and for what is clearly art. I won’t debate the merit of the art, that’s for critics and I’m not much good at that - I like it. It makes me feel. It makes me think. And it makes me wonder about a world where media - a sculpt, a sim, a house…is developed by the users. The content cascades - the Starax wand is no transfer - there are only a limited number of copies left…but through open source development, users can now create their own holodecks, tools make it easier to temp rez prims…ideas from one build feed an idea…the next master wand might be the one that YOU make.