Launching of the Dreamweapon, 62nd Day of Spring, 525 M.E. (Castor): Oh, the mysteries of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar! Ten days ago, the 52nd Day of Spring, was Establishment of the Dreamweapon and now, ten days later, it's Launching of the Dreamweapon. The ten days of the Dreamweapon. I tried to keep some conceptual continuity in the daily images here, including the color blue, the blue sky, the blue circle, and so on. 

I first became aware of Angus MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar from a 2014 mixtape curated by Stephen O'Malley of the band Sunn O))) for London's FACT Magazine (Fact Mix 445). He included MacLise's vocal recitation of the names of the days from MacLise's 2003 album, The Cloud Doctrine. It's a nearly 20-minute-long spoken word performance with no background music or context, and I had no idea what it was about. "Ways to the deep meadow, the white fleet's landfall, realm of violent dream, pre-dawn chart, sun quarter pass, basalt day," and so on, MacLise drones in a deadpan, monotone voice. It's a long, difficult listen, especially if one has no idea what it's all about.

It wasn't until months later that I discovered that Universal Solar Calendar was indeed an actual calendar, as quixotically laid out in MacLise's own handwriting. It's as much calendar as it is poetry and a piece of calligraphic art. I was further intrigued when I read that the visionary composer La Monte Young encouraged use of the Universal Solar Calendar to track the days rather than the traditional Julian calendar, and I  figured if it's good enough for Young, it's good enough for me.

But I found it hard to follow along with the calendar as MacLise had laid it out, but that's on me, not the artist. However, I retrofitted the calendar into the traditional grid, and then came up with the idea of six-day weeks with the days named for stars and added a leap year day (Fifth Twelve) on the 60th day of the year so that each year the calendar always begins and ends on the same day of the week. Launching of the Dreamweapon will always be on a Castor, the third of the six days of the week.    

It's still nearly impossible to track a year based on the names of the days (does Day of the Crooked Spirit come before or after Child Found Within the Tree, and by how many days?). But it is possible to understand the passage of time between today, the 63nd Day of Spring, and, say, the 12th Day of Autumn, especially when you know that each month contains 73 days (except for autumn, which contains 74).

Walt Disney once encouraged younger artists to take a good idea and stay with it, and work it until it's done and done right, or something to that effect. I know my new revisions to MacLise's Universal Solar Calendar has little to no practical value now, and probably confuses people more than it enlightens anyone, but I intend to keep at it and keep moving forward with it until I can figure out what can be done with it.