I’m yawning as we head south out of Oswego. No amount of coffee is going to fight the malaise of a grey, grey day. I’m eager to be headed home. Eager to BE home. I’ve got a couple of tasks really cut out for me when I get there. A lot of work. T-shirts to design, websites to update, a couple of songs to record, a home to get in order and a head to get straight. I’ve got songs swirling in my head and philosophies and two toys to learn about. I’m headed to a serious psychological conundrum about particle / wave disparities and I’m horribly aware that most people I know seriously wouldn’t give a fuck.
And it’s that stuff you put into music, in the hopes that you find something universal. For all that we’re a fragmented race, unable to come together on music, football or faith, we do have some pretty vast underlying skeins. Whether its Love, the desire for it, the loss of it, the need for it – or it’s the existential challenges of why we are here – or why evil is here with us – or what “good” is or why people die or why … why why why?…. these are the questions we have that are near to useless to discuss. But if you can address them with art you have a slight chance, be it ever so tiny, of at least fencing with it for a while and hooking into the gestalt of the question while you’re at it.
In betwixt sets, smoking and listening. Will Schaff and Rachel (bass player for Christopher Johnson) just caught beautifully in the light. French people (that’s what Rah SHELL be) are inherently graceful cigarette smokers. Will demands a song he ain’t gonna get (but I swore to re-record when I got home and below, ilyAIMY performing at Fort Foreclosure in Warren, RI.
Now, judging from Heather’s non-plussed reaction, you’re going to think this next part is weird. But you like weird. Otherwise you wouldn’t like ME and you wouldn’t be reading this. So bear with me.
Neither a particle nor a wave. Perhaps both. That fundamental is what’s really bugging me right now. Conundrum and paradox and Living on the edge of things seems a regular haunt for me. Whether it’s the music that I make of the beliefs I hold or even the language I choose. I’m neither one thing or the other. It’s slight addressed in Slight Departure. If I thought about it I’m sure it’s a struggle that’s in a lot of my music. But I think I maybe found the root of it.
light. Neither a particle or a wave. Or Perhaps both. I hate the fact that I grew up knowing about light and it’s place on the electromagnetic spectrum, fundamentally defined by its amplitude and oscillation, troughs, phase and frequency – obviously discussing it as a waveform – and yet had regular conversations about photons and laser beams and never grasped the fundamental disconnect between those two concepts. It wasn’t until I was working at the Maryland Science Center in my 20s that I even encountered a double split interference diagram and had this fundamental contradiction thrown in my face. And I have never really wrapped my brain around it, still disbelieving it on some level, placing the paradox as the fault of limitations of the observers rather than as anything more fundamental to the universe than that.
This isn’t as high-minded as it may seem. I really do mean “grew up knowing”. My dad was an optical physicist and my brother and I spent plenty of days getting to go into Dad’s “office” at NASA to watch him work with lasers. Years later, I don’t remember precisely what his aims were with all of those coherent light beams bouncing around those darkened rooms, but I imagine it was sort of like growing up with religion – where it’s not until years later that you start realizing the contradictions in what you’ve been told.
By then of course you’ve just folded your beliefs into your mental toolkit and gotten on with the fundamental process of trying to make sense of your place in the world, never realizing that part of your toolkit is fundamentally flawed. Thank goodness it still bounces off of shit and returns to us in a visually satisfying manner.
So anywho – double slit experiments bug the Hell out of me because I feel there’s got to be another explanation that doesn’t get all quantum at you and I’m bugged by bugs that seem entirely too smart because they seem to fly in the face of what can be passed along via genetics and yet spider webs and bola bugs and complex pheremonal hunting lures are magicked away with the wave of a hand and the statement that it’s all “instinct” and “mysterious animal senses”. Yeah. It’s all quantum. Might as well be Jesus.
I feel like I’m losing my grasp of the infinite as I become more and more invested in people and individuals.
And maybe that’s a good thing – but it means that I’m losing my faith in math and am in danger of believing in magic again. Brushstrokes of God as the universe breaks down because we’re looking too damned close. The space betwixt atoms is where God Lives, in the quantum ephemera that’s more faith than science.
And yeah – how do you put THAT into a song?
My head’s a mess.
Despite the weirdnesses swirling through my head – it’s probably time for me to acknowledge some practical tragedy. Two things: one – I’m really, really sad to be missing Paul Diblasi’s wake and memorial service this weekend. I’ve gotten lots of texts and messages wondering where I was. Especially since the Saturday house concert wasn’t the most successful in the world I sort of feel bad for not having canceled the weekend’s shows and running back down – but I know that Paul would’ve rather had me on the road Living the rockstar Life. He always took some indirect joy out of the stories I brought back from the road. I’m sad that this Monday I don’t get to come back and tell him tales of the girl who hit on me in particularly stunning fashion, the bad sound, the no sound, the good sound, trying to supply remote sound and the general angsts of Life on the move.
We’re driving into the mists in Pennsylvania, it’s a rainy day for Paul Diblasi III’s memorial service. Well, it’s a rainy day here – unfortunately I’m not THERE – but fortunately I hear they’re not suffering under the same pall (haha) of grey and wet. We’re climbing over the mountains and central PA unfolds around us, colours washed out and watercoloured and it’s absolutely beautiful.
Item two: I’m so very sorry to hear about the Weberhouse. Weber was a band we encountered while camping together at an ill-fated festival in Kentucky, and they and their members have long maintained a beautiful old house in Louisville. The denizens are all working musicians in multiple bands and you never knew who was going to be there any given night, but everyone was friendly and we always had a home in Louisville. I hear it burned to the ground due to some sort of electrical fire and the pictures show that there’s simply nothing left. I’m glad no-one was hurt and hope the best for everyone
there.
Hugs to my friends. People, be careful with your bare wires and infections. Love you all.
