As many friends know, occasionally I muse, and frequently lament the state of rock music as it applies to both today’s live and recording landscape. It has devolved over the decades into a seemingly endless desert where every day that you stride toward, you end up further away from the distant cool mountain springs. The worst of groundhog days for the aspiring musician, profoundly discouraging and frustrating.
Then I started to look at a larger picture, one not relegated only to our little world of musicianship. Our age has indeed changed, mostly driven by the digital technology explosion of the last five decades. As struggling musicians, our myopic view reveals scarcely the tip of the iceberg and its impact on our lives.
Reflecting back on the hope, revolution and revelations that defined the 50s and 60s, and the rudimentary beginnings of digital technology development, we dared to dream about stepping off of our little blue gem hanging here in the middle of space in search of other bluer and greener pastures. We were charged because we had the ability to become romantic explorers again.
Using what is today considered relatively stone-age technology we set the lofty goal of venturing beyond the thin onion skin of our atmosphere out into space. After we had established that we could even do it, we set about visiting our planet’s nearest companion in our leaky dinghys which had held us, since prehistoric man, spellbound for millennia: our beloved Luna, the moon.
But to sell it to the public we invented a race that we had to win, in order to spur further scientific development by luring in the brightest minds and to get the 30 billion-plus dollars it would cost to be victorious.
We were able to grant twelve men a perspective that no one else in history had ever achieved. We proved it was not made of cheese, nor platinum and diamonds. We did geological (or it is lunarlogical?) experiments to gauge its makeup and age, and quietly, it’s mining potential.
Then we left.
The answered questions ultimately outweighed the combination of unanswered ones The profit potential was assessed, and the Apollo project was abandoned in favor of low-earth orbit commercial space-trucking, for decades.
Nowadays, who can even name more of those twelve lucky men than Armstrong and Aldrin?
Aside from its public relations potential, victory over the challenge of reaching the moon had two further benefits, though. First, we gained a tremendous database of knowledge in natural sciences, and perhaps really began to realize and appreciate how special, unique and fragile our earth is.
Secondly it added to our understanding of applied sciences, as well. Our understanding of how the physical universe ticks began to grow in leaps and bounds. Quantum mechanics was becoming more understood and widely accepted. Planck was finally becoming as well-known as Einstein. Our wild-haired Uncle Al was ultimately proven to have it almost right, and has been demoted from demigod to stepping-stone status in the field of physics since.
Quantum science is interesting to us, the non-physicists, because it gets to disobey the laws of conventional physics. The hippies of the science world. Enter the profit-seekers and snake-oil salesmen. Once the word “quantum” was promulgated beyond the bounds of nerd-dom the commonly accepted definition of the word shifted. Now it is generally understood to mean anything that gets to legally break scientific law. And then the dream merchants started selling that you could have anything you want just by wishing for it. And people began lapping it up like sweet cream. Buy our easy to read book and we’ll show you how.
Just tap your heels together three times. Simple affirmation will get the job done with minimal effort, right?
Not quite. It’s more than a little sad that the word has been so misinterpreted and commandeered by those with an agenda, or worse yet those who really believe it and espouse it so vociferously without a clue as to the truth of it.
Indeed, there is some merit to desire. Desire is something you want, for whatever reason. And it’s true that desire puts the wheels of creation into motion. But to lay it all on the wheels of creation is missing something. What’s missing is the motive force behind the creative idea. We’ve been sold and told to expect everything to just happen because we want it, and we want it with none-to-minimal effort on our parts.
There’s nothing wrong with efficiency, mind you, but at least a minimum of application of effort by the desire-er is required. Maybe you’ve heard of “you don’t get something for nothing.” I mean, I want to continue to live, and so to do that I have to go to the effort of obtaining and consuming food. The point is, desire and motion in lockstep are really what’s required in the complete equation. The word “quantum” has no real comfortably accurate place beyond the confines of science.
So back to the conquest of space. We today still peer at the sky with awe and wonder, and the desire to step off our beautiful little lifeboat is rekindled. Every year we’re discovering new exoplanets by the scores, some we believe with suitable terraforming to sustain us. We’re beginning to long to visit, to explore again. The leaps and bounds of science in the past half-century, the real understanding of quanta, have begun to put those goals within our ability to grasp.
With the way we’ve treated this planet we need to find somewhere else to pillage, er, live. Alas, it may even be too late. We need to adapt to change in order to survive, provided we’re not the frog in the kettle of water on the stove. Sadly, that’s the adaptation we’ve adopted in many ways, because of our collective lack of adding the required motive force.
Most of our scientific understanding has come from arcane concepts in physics in the lower two and three dimension thought expressions, as a matter of relative simplicity. For the longest time we played in our own backyard, only regarding the world we could see and explain on human scales. We ignored the smallest micro- and largest macro- expressions of what Mama Nature has to offer. On those outer levels the chiseled-in-stone the rules begin becoming unraveled, yet still a little blurry and obscured. On those outer levels Mama still has a few tricks up her sleeve, tricks a few sharp minds are now beginning to understand.
We’ve learned to formulate better questions. We’ve added new understandings, shedding some light on dark matter and starting to crack the mysteries of dark energy. We’re beginning to understand fuller implications of quantum entanglement, and the concept of multiverse is being better perceived. We’re finally starting to wrap our minds around infinity.
The future is bright. Hopefully not from the flash of a nuke, though.
So you say, what does all of this have to do with musicians, then? Several things have been touched upon. As above, so below.
Change is the only constant whilst riding on the arrow of time. We need to have the malleability to adapt to change.
Things have accelerated in our age so much there a new renaissance in thought and technology every few months. To become better at our craft we need to embrace that new tech…we can still use the same old tools, but need to use them in new and unique ways. New technologies are fully developed by marrying existing ones.
We need to open our vistas to new exploration, seeking new suitable and viable fertile ground for our art. Fear of trying something different keeps us earthbound, holding us hostage in our cocoons.
We need to apply motive force to our creative impulses. Wish and do, in favor of just wishing. The motive force, the Do, must be for more altruistic reasons than simple profit. That’s where most of us sabotage ourselves.
Let’s not blow ourselves up, huh?