Nova Ahead 17

The sun is coming up through the trees, and its shape is abstracted by the deep green vertical lines and slow waving grey deadness of winter. I’ve been in this dreamstate of planning shows, getting high on the idea of summer concerts in the new space, which compared to the stillness and cold outside of my window currently, still feels like a long way off. My brain has been swimming in hypothetical futures and contingency plans, interspersed with thoughts of swimming in the waters of New England: standing chest deep with a cold beer in the ocean, letting the waves throw you around while trying to maintain the integrity of your beverage; the weird distant echoes of people along the perimeter of a lake; the perfect cold veins of mountain rivers. For me, these various waters are just as important as live music, equally refreshing and duly connecting me to that great eternal vibration, the familiarity nestled solidly within each one of us. As with water or music, this is where intuition lives, where you can feel when another person or moment is resonating at the same frequency; sometimes those frequencies are all sounding together in one place, humming undeniably, like the audience at a concert. Other times, two strings are far apart but still harmonizing steadily, unending notes plucked and ringing out over any distance, whether space or time; still connected via music, or memory, which is of course, metaphorical water. Let’s just hold onto that together, let’s meditate on how closeness doesn’t have to describe the immediate, but rather the thrum of two notes always looking ahead together. 

That’s nice, right? Okay, so exhale and let’s talk about something heavy. We just watched Judas and the Black Messiah, the new Shaka King film about the murder of Fred Hampton, the chairman of the Chicago chapter of the Black Panther Party. Does anyone else think that it is bizarre that films exist about actual murders committed by the police and the government in real life? That entertainment can be made of these tragedies, but justice is essentially impossible? These people (Fred Hampton being one), executed illegally and extrajudicially, were working and fighting for the betterment of our society, standing up for people being unfairly treated, and pushing those in power to stop sanctioning and perpetuating systemic abuse. They threatened white supremacy so were systematically and violently removed. And all of the evidence exists. And we all know it. I just can’t make sense of that; can’t keep moving forward in the reality of it, but eventually I will, and so will everyone else, and that’s because most people will choose heartache and psychic suffering over inflicting violence on other people, even if it would mean justice or retribution. Things need to be set right with a seismic empathetic dawning, an acknowledgement by those who find themselves in power through manipulation of markets and resources, that our civilization only exists by exploiting people without the same power. This is not left or right; the left decry it, and the right embrace it and philosophize white supremacy into a language demanding patience, compromise, and the understanding that they have seldom regarded others with. There is no statute of limitations for murder, and I like to think that at some point soon, this country will reorganize its priorities and start digging into some actual healing, naming those responsible and starting an apology and rehabilitation tour, that as far as I’m concerned, should be a continual atoning.

There’s no easy segue with this stuff, and sometimes that’s why I don’t expand on these feelings more frequently. While I was letting all of that out, part of my mind was really hanging onto the idea of the seismic; you see I’m preparing for this Friday’s livestream by listening to Ty Ueda’s Sleep Sessions, a sprawling meditation, a river of brainwaves played on pedal steel. This is healing music that Ueda made after a hit and run accident left one of his arms irreversibly altered, and he began playing the complex niche instrument, partly at the suggestion of his orthopedic surgeon. It sounds like it could be an apt soundtrack to a personal awakening, giving voice to the silent realization of the mechanics of society, that many of us are often blind to. Uncaring waves of consequence crashing against the idiotic jersey barriers meant to hold back the entire goddamn ocean; they won’t be quite enough. The ocean is unequivocal love, and love decimates and cannot be contained. You can build barriers and draw the blinds, erect marble mansions, but eventually the coastline will be further in, and water will still crawl up the sand, tracing ankles, then receding. 

So that’s what Ty Ueda’s music makes me think of, and I guess now also Fred Hampton, and the ocean of love that will wash away the sneering white faces of a racist, old, America. Maybe that’s a lot to process; it might feel a little unfocused, but after all of this time asking you to walk around in my mind, you have to humor me and follow the disparate threads here and there. It all comes together eventually, and just like that, everything’s melting, and the sun is whole.

- Eric Gagne