November 07, 2006

astrophysical wonders and fretboard pyrotechnics

Though many commonplace things can and do distract my thoughts (particularly when I have a paper to write) there's nothing like a clear night sky to get my mind wandering. The stars have always wielded power over my imagination. As I've said before in previous ramblings, they send me either into sublime philosophical exploration or silly imaginative romps. I could imagine the stars to be acollection of diamonds shining against a backdrop of dull black velvet, or else they could be the metal studs in the tight faux-alligator-leather pants of an 80s heavy metal guitarist.

With a bit of imagination I can reconfigure the constellations into not a warrior or a set of twins but Yngwie Malmsteen (in the aforementioned trousers), 9 minutes into his numbingly ornate guitar solo, his Bach-meets-rock neo-baroque metal blaring through the 38 giant Marshall amps behind him and washing over the world-weary souls of the mulleted and mustachioed audience, who are just satisfied that the last thing they'll ever be able to hear was so grand, powerful, and big. After a dazzling display of fretboard gymnastics up in the sky he will perhaps set his guitar on fire, and as the building fire reflects off his infinite amount of gaudy bling he'll toss his guitar into the deafened audience, and with a toss of his teased mullet saunter backstage and refuse an encore.

Diamonds or metal studs, or whatever I call them, the stars don't correct me. They always tell just a tad less than I want to hear. Frost touches on this:

"dark is what brings out your light./ Some mystery becomes the proud./ But to be wholly taciturn/ In your reserve is not allowed."

Look up and wait for answers and you enter the cosmic staring match. You're not going to win, but you find you just can't stop looking. Everyone who looks up there sees something big and eternal. Infinitely grand yet infintely cold and distant.

But tomorrow's going to be another working day, and we all gotta get some rest at the end of the day, and my paper still isn't written, so I now perform the perennially necessary task of sweeping these musings under the rug and continuing on with life. We grin and bear the cold and the silence, facing the cold with devotional warmth or gritty galgenhumor. So...good night.

Posted by jonsligh at November 7, 2006 09:34 PM
Comments

Maybe the problem is with us--"the perennially necessary task of sweeping these musings under the rug and continuing on with life." Perhaps if we did away with this necessity, we might be brave enough to actually figure out what we are looking for, and be willing to accept whatever it is when we find it.
Maybe those stars aren't cold and distant. Maybe they are telling us all they know, because the answers are too big for even them.

Posted by: a fellow gazer at November 8, 2006 03:11 PM

Fellow gazer,
I liked the nod to Melville. That story is certainly relevant in this context. It raises questions that star-gazers and navel-gazers have been exploring for a long, long time.

I don't mean to be contrary, but while I concede that there may be some twisted glutton-for-punishment side to the human soul that enjoys irresolution, it seems to be that the perennially necessary task is, well perennially necessary because of the silence. Maybe one doesn't get answers because he's asking the wrong questions, but until he figures out the right questions he's going to have to lift up the rug at the end of each day and whisk those queries away.

Posted by: (rock)star-gazer at November 8, 2006 04:34 PM

Ah humanity. Nice.

Ok, I'll give you that. Though it could be argued that in daily sweeping away the dust cloud of questions you are blocking out the answers, which might take more than a day to receive--but I don't want to argue.

The right questions. How can we figure them out if we are not willing to keep our queries out for awhile? Maybe with honest intelligence we can figure them out, but we would "prefer not to." Or maybe we're just bitter ginger nuts. Ah humanity indeed.

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