Cryptic Tailgate of the Mourners, 35th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Helios):  Easter. The son has died and now the father can be born. 

All the right-wing pundits and agitators who keep screaming about an alleged "War on Christmas" don't seem to imagine a war on Easter, although from what I see, Easter is much less celebrated than Christmas, even though it seems like it's the more foundational Christian holiday. Virgin-birth mythology aside, the extraordinary thing about Jesus wasn't his birth but his supposed resurrection, but they seem willing to let observation of the latter slide while getting quite defensive if you're not as enthusiastic about the former as they deem appropriate. The cynic in me wonders if the reason isn't theological but monetary - it's harder to capitalize on Easter than Christmas.

As a child, Christmas was the greatest holiday of the year. My parents generously lavished their children with gifts and it was our major annual acquisition event. Christmas was when we got the toys to last us for the next year and clothes for the rest of the winter and hopefully the spring. Our material status rose or fell based on our haul on Christmas morning.  

Easter, on the other hand, had candy, which was cool, but it also had hard-boiled eggs which were kind of gross, and it also meant dressing up in uncomfortable clothes and sitting through a particularly crowded and stuffy church service. It also meant a blood-sugar crash sometime later in the day, and a realization that jelly beans and Peeps were our least favorite candies. Confection-wise, Easter couldn't hold a candle to Halloween.

Christmas smelled like evergreens and pies. Easter smelled like the vinegar used to dye the eggs. Also, pictures at Sears with the Easter Bunny were far more terrifying than pictures with Santa. 

Christmas was joyous and celebratory. Easter was something to be endured.

 

The Remnants of Bela, 34th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Electra): We're in the in-between season here in Atlanta. In between heating and air conditioning. It's warm enough to not need the heat, but cool enough not to crank up the AC. Warm enough to peel the comforter and heavy blanket off the bed, too cool to sleep under just a sheet.

Without the heat or AC running, the air in the house in still and calm. When I light a stick of incense during meditation, the smoke trails straight up toward the ceiling in a solid gray column. No dispersion, no chaotic eddies of curling smoke. A single straight column, like smoke from a campfire in the deep forest in a Maxfield Parrish painting. It's a beautiful sight, although looking at it after meditating, the calm mind is more inclined than usual to find beauty in the mundane and simple. 

As I slowly walk around the room between sitting periods, my motion disturbs the air and the smoke sinuously bends and snakes. I can even see it respond as I slowly approach and the mass of my body bulldozes the air in front of me. When I'm very close, the smoke is as chaotic and eddified as when the heat or AC is running. I don't see the column as I walk away as it's now behind me, but when I turn a corner, I notice it's returning to the straight gray column of before.

There's no metaphor here, no lesson to be learned. It is what it is. The weather's pleasantly mild, smoke rises, your humble narrator observes and finds joy in the simple physics. 

The end.

 

Day of Sargasso, 33rd of Spring, 526 M.E. (Deneb): We're in another inscrutable and senseless war for some reason of another, the economy's gone to shit, no one believes there will be free and fair elections this November, the climate's gone haywire, and, not unrelated, the most incompetent, irresponsible, and inappropriate people imaginable are running the government, but whitey's back on the moon.

Day of Kalimantan, 32nd of Spring, 526 M.E. (Castor): I have two minds. I only have one brain (of course), but at least two minds exist within that brain. Maybe more.

When I sit in meditation, thoughts naturally arise. I don't try to control them or direct them, nor do I try to stop or stifle them. I just observe them and let them wander freely as I observe.

But if I'm observing my thoughts, then my thoughts aren't me. Who's thinking those thoughts and who's observing them? And as you might guess, as I realize that there's a separate observer, I realize that there's also a mind that's observing the observer that's observing the thoughts. But I've never been able to hold all three in my mind at the same time: the thinker, the observer, and the observer of the observer. Once I become aware of the observer of the observer, the original thoughts seem to vanish as if into thin air. I can't tell if its like a hall of mirrors with an infinite number of reflections of reflections, or if I'm just switching back and forth between dual states - the observer and the observed. 

First there's the original thinker, the observer of thoughts. Then there's the observer of the observer. Is the observer of the observer of the observer the original thinker again, or some third state of mind? Is there an infinite progression of observers, or is it a cycle, or is it like a magnet switching between two polarities?

I don't know.

Today, the Stable Genius fired his Attorney General, the dishonest and duplicitous Pam Bondi. Last month, he fired his Secretary of Homeland Security, the puppy killer Kristi Noem. Bondi and Noem, while contemptible, or no worse than their replacements, Todd Blanche and Markwayne Mullen, or our black-out drunk Secretary of Defense or our grifting Director of the FBI. Why is it the Stable Genius only fires the women in his administration? 

I don't know.

Day of Niagara, 31st of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Asian countries, including China and India, are stepping up their usage of coal to make up part of the loss of oil coming through the Strait of Hormuz, adding to the war's already staggering carbon footprint. The Stable Genius announced that he's "seriously considering" pulling the U.S. out of NATO, giving Putin the gift he's wanted for decades. The Stable Genius also eased up on the oil sanctions imposed on Russia, another gift, and allowed a Russian tanker to deliver oil through the embargo that had been placed on Cuba. The umpire in last night's Red Sox-Astros game lost count of balls and strikes, and allowed a Houston batter to continue at the plate even after his third swinging strike. 

The world's going to hell along at least a dozen doomsday scenarios. I try to imagine the world five years from now and don't see many scenarios where things aren't apocalyptically bad. I have maybe 10 years left of life, probably no more than five good ones, so my losses will be somewhat minimized, but it's the children I feel sorry for. 

No future, indeed.

 

Plaint of the Host, 30th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): Aldebaran is the first of the six-day week in the New Revised USC, the equivalent to a Monday in the Julian calendar. As I had traveled back from Knoxville and Big Ears yesterday and this is my first full day back home, today feels like a Monday to me. Fitting it's Aldebaran.

I sat today for the first time since the Fourth Day of the Zenith, the 22nd of Spring. I was too busy to sit during the festival - hell, most days I was too busy to eat or sleep, much less sit. Knowing a gap was coming up in my schedule, I allowed myself to also miss sitting on the day before I left, so I could complete some chores like laundry, shopping, packing, etc., so today was my first time sitting in nine days.

It was worse last year. My records show that in 2025 I missed 12 days around the Big Ears festival, and after resuming sitting twice, I missed another two weeks for some reason or another before I got back in the rhythm of sitting every other day again. That gap in last year's schedule is a stark reminder of the need for vigilance to maintain my practice. 

Axios reports that the oil shortage triggered by the Iran war will spread globally in a slow-motion crisis, much like the covids did five years ago. The shock will unfold sequentially rather than simultaneously, a rolling supply disruption moving westward, dictated by shipping times and buffered unevenly by regional inventories. Asia is feeling the pain of lost supply now, but the pain is still muted elsewhere.

The average gas price in the U.S. is $4.02 today, up from $3.06 in January and a preview of the pain to come. Prices could get high enough to force people and companies to stop using oil, eventually taking cars and trucks off the road, ships off the sea, and planes out of the sky.

In his post-apocalyptic, post-peak World Made by Hand novels, James Howard Kunstler imagines the downfall of society and the modern world begins with severe disruptions to the global supply chain. In the novels, the disruption is started by a terroristic act on a container vessel, but in the reality we're all living through now, the disruption is predicated by the Stable Genius' terrorism in Iran and followed by Iran's blockage of the Strait of Hormuz, which could eventually collapse the entire global supply chain.

As you might guess, things don't go well for the world in the novels.

 

The Topaz Glove, 29th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Helios): I'm back from Big Ears, exhausted but happy for all the great music I heard. I only got about five hours of sleep each night since Thursday, so I'm quite exhausted now.  It was tiring, but worth it.

However, please be patient and give me one more day before I resume the usual posting. Thank you for your kindness. 

 

Day of the Ascendant, 28th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Helios): Last day of Big Ears 2026. I actually wrote and posted this several days ago and post-dated it for today, so for all we know I may have ascended myself by now, carried off to the celestial heavens on open-form improvisational music. I may be sleeping off a bender along the railroad tracks under the Gay Street bridge or I may have turned my car around on the way up for some inexplicable reason and never arrived up here. Who knows? I sure as shit don't.

But if all's gone according to plan, today I'm taking in the final day of the 2026 Big Ears festival and will head back home tomorrow, when "normal" (whatever that is) posting will resume.   

 

The Overheard Rites, 27th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Deneb): The Third Day of Big Ears in one possible version of the New Revised Universal Solar Calendar. If I had more time, I might be tempted to write something about all the rites I've been overhearing at the festival this year, but that would be forced and corny so it's probably just as well I don't have the time.  

It's also No Kings Day here in the United States. Find a local protest and get out there are be heard. 

 

Bridge of Dread, 26th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Castor): Big Ears, Day 2. You know the situation - there's a time for blogging and there's a time for music, and this is the latter.  

 

Godsong of the Pale Blue Women, 25th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Betelgeuse): Often, while I'm in my alternating-day meditation, I'll have a stream of thought that I'll want to post here in this blog. But after I'm done and sit down in front of the computer, I find that either the thought was way more involved and convoluted than I could possibly try to capture in a single blog post, or that I can capture portions of it but can't find a starting point to jump in on, or, most often, that I can't remember the "genius" idea I wanted to write down. The memory is like a dream, vivid at first, half gone by the morning's first cup of coffee, and completely forgotten by noon. 

Leave it to Michael Pollan to describe the ephemeral nature of thought far better than I can ever hope.  Our so-called thoughts, he writes in A World Arises, "are preverbal, often showing up as images, sensations, or concepts, with words trailing behind as a kind of afterthought - belated attempts to translate hose elusive wisps of meaning into something more substantial and shareable." 

Exactly. We understand and know what we're thinking without needing the words to nail it down. I might forget a person's name or a movie title, but I know full well who or what I'm thinking of and don't need a label in my mind to identify them. A smile, a nod, and a simple "thank you" might have made my day, and I recall the sensation without having to tell myself it was, say, Joan White from accounting, and when I tell someone else how much I appreciated the gesture, I find that the name "Joan" is suddenly gone because I didn't need the proper noun for it to exist in my memory. 

Also, while I might use full sentences to reconstruct a thought ("last night, I was thinking about a sunset I once saw in Lanzarote"), when I was actually remembering that sunset last night, my mind didn't form the words "a sunset I once saw in Lanzarote." In my mind, I just imagined the reddish sky over the ocean blue, and felt the fading warmth of the crepuscule sun. Our memories, the stories we tell to ourselves, depend on words, but the faculty of memory, the way they actually arise in our minds, doesn't need language - we already know what we're thinking.  

In Ulysses, James Joyce accurately mimicked the mind's stream-of-consciousness wording, but it's difficult and sometimes annoying to read the words. "Hmm, mustn't," Leopold Bloom thinks to himself. "On the dresser, the letter. Breakfast, eggs. Nearly time." If he were trying to tell someone else what he was thinking right then, he'd say he was trying to not think about what his wife was doing back at home at that very moment, because he saw the letter from her lover on the dresser thar morning saying they would be trysting within the hour. But all those words aren't how thoughts arise, and "Hmm, mustn't. On the dresser, the letter. Breakfast, eggs. Nearly time," is much closer, and that's how Joyce writes it in Ulysses (actually, something like that - with apologies to Mr. Joyce, I'm too lazy to go look that passage up to get the exact wording, but you get the idea).

I'm driving to Knoxville today and don't have the time to post much else here today. I may not return to posting until The Topaz Glove, the 29th Day of Spring (March 30 to y'all), but I may post some late-night or early-morning updates about the Big Ears sets over at Music Dissolves Water and on Instagram, if you know how to find me there.   

Car. Long trip. No time. Music first.

 

The Ant Garden, 24th Day of Spring, 526 M.E. (Aldebaran): One thing old Angus MacLise would never have anticipated was the four-day Big Ears music festival in Knoxville, Tennessee. I firmly believe MacLise would have appreciated and enjoyed it, and participated in it with his friends Lou Reed and John Cale and La Mont Young (who had a composition premiere here a couple years ago), but MacLise passed away some 30 years before the festival even began.  

But in an imaginary, alternative time line, one wonders if MacLise would have been tempted to add four days of Big Ears to his Universal Solar Calendar (i.e., Day of Big Ears, Second Day of Big Ears, etc.). I've been tempted to add it to my New Revised USC, but the dates aren't the same every year (it's generally the last full weekend in March), and the whole purpose of the New Revision is for annual repeatability and regularity. Can't have a name day that's the 25th of Spring one year and the 23rd another year.     

All of which is probably the most awkward and nerdiest way possible to say the Big Ears music festival starts tomorrow, and I'll be going. There's no single bucket-list, must-see performer appearing this year. However, I'm looking forward to hearing some of John Zorn's sets in his third residency here in the past four years, including the first reunion of his original Masada quartet (1994-97), as well as guitarists Fred Frith, Jeff Parker, Nels Cline, Marc Ribot, and Mary Halvorson, all of whom I've seen at least once or more before at previous Big Ears since 2018. Vibraphonist Patricia Brennan will be presenting her outstanding septet and drummer Ches Smith will be performing with his new Clone Row band. Even drummer Dave Lombardo of the band Slayer will be there for a set with Zorn and keyboardist John Medeski. A first (for me, as well as many others, I suspect) will be the legendary but elusive downtown musician and artist Charlemagne Palestine, a contemporary of La Mont Young who probably knew MacLise. 

Pat Metheny is making his Big Ears debut this year and I haven't seen him since 1987, but I'll miss his 2½-hour set tomorrow night due to conflicts with other performances at or about the same time. Ditto Laurie Anderson, who I saw at Big Ears 2024 and who returns this year for several performances, including a duet with Zorn. But again, conflicts and schedule issues. 

The ghost of Lou Reed hangs over this year's festival. Not only is his widow, Laurie Anderson, performing, as is his pre-Velvets contemporary Charlemagne Palestine, but there will be an installation piece on Sunday at an old Greyhound station of Reed's guitars leaning against amplifiers to create a continuous feedback drone, accompanied by various, as-yet unannounced musicians selected by Anderson. 

The festival is like an ocean - so big you can't even drink half of it in. At any given moment, there may be as more than a dozen performances on separate stages, and one can only be at one place at a time. That can get frustrating, especially if you have FOMO, and the Zen approach is to just enjoy the set you're experiencing at any given moment and not think about all that you're missing. 

The way I look at it is Big Ears in a major event, an international gathering of an astonishing number of world-class musicians, all performing, collaborating, and improvising together in the unlikely location of Knoxville, Tennessee, a mere four-hour drive away. The event is not about me, or any other single listener, but we get to be some small part of the titanic happening. 

And for that we should be grateful.