I’ve been Exploring – as I do – concepts and ideas that are being shown to me right now, and I realized that somebody should “Science the shit” out of this.
Oh wait…they already did.
Remember, I’m a pop culture girl. I believe I’ve lived a really long time and my first course was in Music. That said, I understand things by feel, not by the book. Traditional learning kicked my ass for twelve years and I didn’t even bother with college. So now I’m living a life where communicating some of how things work is made available to me thanks to intersectionality.
I don’t “physics” but I can feel the spirit and the construct of a thing, which provides me with an amazing opportunity to say you CAN throw the books out, at least long enough to learn to feel for yourself instead of taking somebody else’s word for….well….ANYTHING.
Back in the 1970’s, I was a huge fan of the band Styx. While most of my peers were listening to the Rolling Stones, Fought, Foreigner, Journey or god forbid, Chicago, I was listening to something I have always identified as more orchestral. I’ve always attributed this to years of piano lessons and later competing just enough to be able to say I was a competition pianist – in junior high.
Recently, I’ve found myself inundated with content (movies, film and yes…social media) about physics. The part I’m going to talk about here is how fast the earth is rotating. How fast it’s rocketing across the universe to some potential event horizon. I don’t always remember where the sources of an idea come from, I just put an idea in a little cubby that lives in the rolltop desk of my mind. There are a LOT of slots there. In science terms I would say cells on a spreadsheet or much closer, the a relational database that is shared between me and my literal “i-cloud” account. No, it was NOT Steve Jobs who invented cloud storage – that’s another story.
The idea of us rocketing across space time/time space as an entire universe led to the thought that if we are speeding faster towards that event horizon, we would never know, because everything around us is moving at the same rate – thanks Mr. Einstein. I think we can all appreciate the tension and agitation occurring in our space right now. What if this increase in speed is the reason for that? When I think about what has happened just between the great depression and now – a mere 100 years, my mind can’t make the jump.
So this morning, I wake up thinking about how this applies to music, and while this writing is about one small aspect, there is SO much more to this.
I’ve been positing that we are missing two black keys on the piano keyboard and wondering what happens when we remake the octave with fourteen keys rather than the current twelve and more importantly, what happens if we change how we think about the black keys in terms of flats vs. sharps. See my post Teaching Resistance: Lessons from Film and Music.
You’ll be happy to know that I have tasked a friend with digging into that further.
So back to the music of my youth and Styx in particular. I was thinking about how every time I tried to sing along with Dennis DeYoung I was consistently off pitch. This didn’t really happen with any other music and while I’m no Beverly Sills, I can tell when my pitch is missing…even when I can’t seem to correct it. This leads to a whole new way of looking at the band and the music: What if the band and their instruments are all tuned just a tiny bit up so no one would really notice.
I’m not sure if this is intentional, if it’s a post-production move, but I know there’s something there – a thread to pull on – so I go the ChatGPT and pose this query: “What was the impetus behind the making of Pieces of Eight by Styx?”
“Pieces of Eight” (1978) came out of a really specific moment of tension and ambition for Styx.
The impetus was basically this: Styx were riding high after The Grand Illusion (1977), but they were also feeling boxed in by the expectation – both from critics and from their own record label.
Here’s what was driving the album:
1) Pushback against “selling out” accusations – After The Grand Illusion became a massive commercial success, Styx took heat for being too polished, too theatrical, or too radio-friendly. Pieces of Eight was partly a response to that criticism. The band wanted to: 1) Reassert their rock credibility 2) Emphasize individual voices within the band 3) Show they weren’t just chasing hits.
You can hear this defiance direction in the lyrics of “Renegade” an “Blue Collar Man” – songs about outsiders, working-class frustration, and resistance to authority. [Sound familiar?]
2)Internal band philosophy: Individual “pieces – The title of Pieces of Eight reflects the idea that: 1)Each band member was a distinct “piece” 2) Together those pieces formed a whole.
The response goes on the talk about DeYoung vs. Shaw, and this is essentially where it landed for me: DeYoung’s worldview came out of progressive rock, musical theater and big moral or conceptual statements. For him, Styx was about 1) Allegory and cautionary tales.
Shaw arrived younger and more street-level: Emotional immediacy over grand concepts. Physical energy and not metaphor.
Chat GPT used this phrase: “Why this defines Styx’s entire arc. For me, this is one hundred percent about the Arc:
Ark of the Covenant
Arch Angels
Noah’s Ark
Hell, even McDonalds.
It says: “Both come from roots meaning to bend, curve, or span.
Arc – Emphasizes movement through time
Arch – Emphasizes structure across space
Together, they describe: A shaped passage from one state to another.
So given all of that – – the actual point I’m trying to make is that:
1) We each operate at a given frequency, and with that frequecy we attract, music, arts, inspiration and what I would call the manna of life AND we do that through Stardust. Ima say that again. We are made from Stardust. So are the planets, and everything else in the cosmos.
Particles.
Particles that are charged with the same frequency that that we are.
Dennis DeYoung was singing “Come Sail Away”
Sorry for the poor video quality – the 70’s weren’t a great time for video and it matters that DeYoung is singing.
While Tommy Shaw was singing “Blue Collar Man”
Just so I don’t go on forever, which I could on this topic, I’m going to stop here and say what if the people who couldn’t get past Southern Rock, just don’t make it?
If this is hell (and I’m sure it is), we came here to drop off the trash.
I’ve been out here for five plus years fighting dark energy and demons and I can tell you a thing or two.
1) There are Vampires – The wealthy
2) There are Demons – Ice agents are a good example
3) There are Enablers – The government who provides for the Vampires – Think Renfield
4) There are bystanders
The only way to fight this energy safely is from opposing planes – see my post The Role of Angels in Our Lives: A Marvel Perspective
I’m not here to tell you how to get to the next place, I’m here to shed a little light on why you may or may not make it.
I’m pretty sure this life is your “review” since this is the Final Destination of “Heaven on Earth” – nobody told some of us.
Also see the accompanying blog about the Arc/Arch theory.