(previously in Novas 6: Act 1)
(previously in story time: Novas 6.6)
Susan and Jack, now energy beings, are assisting a parallel Earth in the braided multiverse where things are unfolding very differently because of one critical decision made by Susan’s father. And now, this world may be doomed…
Novas 6: The Leaves Which Tremble At Dawn
Act 2: Heart
09 Fake Teak – Post Office Tower (2017, England) MICHAEL with SUSAN’S FATHER
To the Post Office Tower travelled countless miles of copper wire Providing the power for its multiplexing amplifiers And carrying speech from the mouths of London citizens Enabling them to reach distant relatives and absent friends From the Post Office Tower countless telephone calls emanate With thousands every hour in the microwaves that radiate From horns ranged in files curved to focus signals into beams That travel for miles at the speed of information streams And down in its shadow The people run and run From the man in the future And his gun In the Post Office Tower was a great revolving restaurant Its windows would show dreams of housing blocks and motorways But that was devoured by the deeds of nameless miscreants We dreamed we would grow and the future took it all away And down in its shadow The people run and run From the man in the future And his gun When did I go so wrong? Where is the world where I belong? Perhaps I was naive But I did the right thing, I believe From the Post Office Tower, from the dreams of 1965 The future was ours but now that that future has arrived I want to return to the dream we shared with everyone Perhaps we can learn how to turn away the future's gun And down in its shadow The people do not know How the man from the past Tried to grow When did I get so old? When did the world around unfold? Perhaps I am naive But I did the right thing, I believe From the Post Office Tower, from the dream of 1965 Providing the power for the dream we must retain alive From horns ranged in files curved to focus signals into dream That travel for miles at the speed of information streams That carry our speech from the world to the world Ahhh
Tom returns to London, a city and continent in environmental and economic collapse. He investigates a rumour of disappearing scientists. He is near despair. Susan relays a message from this world’s version of her now-dead father.
I love this song by this extremely retro-80s band so much and I wish them much success. This is the kind of music that I thought they pretty much stopped making after 1989.
10 Stellar* – Part Of Me (1999, New Zealand) GABRIELLE
I'm bone fide hermit, up with the sun I admit that it's not everyone's ideal existence or their idea of fun Seems to work for me I'm waiting for the moment The time will, I know it The strength of my connection Will recognise my soul Part of me will know Part of me will know Stop me in the street Stranger when we meet Part of me will know I don't deny selfish hunger in me My ambition can be diva to see I'm not above her but I'm hoping to be Substitutes are free I'm waiting for the moment The time will come, I know it The strength of my conviction Will recognise my soul Part of me will know Part of me will know Stop me in a street Stranger when we meet Part of me will know Recognise my face Some forgotten trace Some familiar face And I'm almost home I'm almost home
Gabrielle is quietly recruiting around the world for a secret project that consumes all of her time.
Michael and Gabrielle meet in ruined London.
Boh Runga and her sister Bic are Maori/Malaysian-Chinese New Zealanders and that is why Gabrielle is part Chinese, because this song is sort of her mission statement.
I don’t know if there is actually a Chinese-Afro-Celtic musical axis but there is definitely something going on with the Chinese-Mongolian steppe and the American West, complete with mandolins.
11 Paul Simon – The Boy In The Bubble (1986, USA) MICHAEL
It was a slow day and the sun was beating On the soldiers by the side of the road There was a bright light A shattering of shop windows The bomb in the baby carriage Was wired to the radio These are the days of miracle and wonder This is the long distance call The way the camera follows us in slo-mo The way we look to us all The way we look to a distant constellation That's dying in the corner of the sky These are the days of miracle and wonder And don't cry baby, don't cry It was a dry wind and it swept across the desert And it curled into the circle of birth And the dead sand falling on the children And the mothers and the fathers and the automatic earth These are the days of miracle and wonder This is the long distance call The way the camera follows us in slo-mo The way we look to us all, oh yeah The way we look to a distant constellation That's dying in the corner of the sky These are the days of miracle and wonder And don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry It's a turnaround jump shot It's everybody jump start It's every generation throws a hero up the pop charts Medicine is magical and magical is art Think of the boy in the bubble And the baby with the baboon heart And I believe These are days of lasers in the jungle Lasers in the jungle somewhere Staccato signals of constant information A loose affiliation of millionaires and billionaires and baby These are the days of miracle and wonder This is the long distance call The way the camera follows us in slo-mo The way we look to us all, oh yeah The way we look to a distant constellation That's dying in the corner of the sky These are the days of miracle and wonder And don't cry baby, don't cry, don't cry, don't cry
Tom is now a key part of Gabrielle’s network. The world situation begins to spiral into crisis as it becomes obvious that something is wrong with the Sun.
Wikipedia credits Forere Motloheloa, an accordion player from Lesotho, alongside of Simon for this song.
12 Laurie Anderson – Big Science 2 (2007, USA) GABRIELLE
Searchlights and satellites Roadblocks and sirens Loud alarms and red alerts Look up at the plasma screen Listen to the way it screams Every man for himself Every man for himself And the wonder of it all The size of it all The superhighways, the networks And the mall Oooh coo Oooh coo coo Big science Oooh coo coo Yodelayayhoo Last days of the Renaissance Last dance before the dawn Last chance to get it all Cause we're making a sacrifice A fortress, a paradise It's gonna be so nice Like they say Only in America And the wonder of it all The size of it all The superhighways, the networks And the mall And the wonder of it all The size of it all This is the time This is the time And this is the record This is the time And this is the record of the time
Gabrielle and Michael escape from a splintering United States of America as the global climatic collapse intensifies.
Laurie Anderson’s original track “Big Science” is from her debut album in 1982, but this updated spinoff is from her 2007 “Big Science EP“.
13 Joan Baez – Rejoice In The Sun (1972, USA) GABRIELLE with SUSAN
Fields of children running wild In the sun Like a forest is your child Growing wild In the sun Doomed in his innocence In the sun Gather your children to your side In the sun Tell them all they love will die Tell them why In the sun Tell them it's not too late Cultivate One by one Tell them to harvest and rejoice In the sun
In an undisclosed location in the Congo, Gabrielle’s project SUNWATCH has taken shape. Giant radiotelescope dishes, laser emitters, tents and construction camps.
Gabrielle and Tom have children onsite, as do many other of the SUNWATCH scientists and engineers.
Susan and Jack are providing advice.
It’s the song from that movie about robots and spaceships that came out five years before that other movie with robots and spaceships!
Hippie folk-rock goddess Joan Baez is the daughter of Albert Baez, an X-ray physicist, and the cousin of John Baez, a mathematical physicist. I just thought that was relevant information. Neither of the three have yet blown up the sun, to my knowledge. But that sort of research tends to get hushed up by the national security agencies if you’re a good enough folk musician.
14 Pink Floyd – Set The Controls For The Heart Of The Sun (1968, England) MICHAEL with JACK
Little by little the night turns around Counting the leaves which tremble at dawn Lotuses lean on each other in yearning Under the eaves the swallow is resting Set the controls for the heart of the sun Over the mountain, watching the watcher Breaking the darkness, waking the grapevine One inch of love is one inch of shadow Love is the shadow that ripens the wine Set the controls for the heart of the sun The heart of the sun The heart of the sun The heart of the sun Witness the man who raves at the wall Making the shape of his question to Heaven Whether the sun will fall in the evening Will he remember the lesson of giving? Set the controls for the heart of the sun The heart of the sun The heart of the sun The heart of the sun
The final night before an expected solar flare, the beginning of the nova cycle and the destruction of all things. Tension as the strange machine is calibrated.
So here’s the Chinese connection again. There’s a really cool website with a lot of background on all of the lines in this song which Roger Waters borrowed from classical Tang Dynasty Chinese poetry, via A.C. Graham’s “Poems of the Late T’ang” (1965).
The poets quoted include: Li Shangyin (813-858), Li He (790-816), Du Mu (803-852), and Meng Jiao (751-814). The historical “man who raved at the wall, writing the shape of his Questions to Heaven” alluded to by Li He is the much earlier, pre-Han, Warring States Period poet and politician Qu Yuan (340-278 BC), whose memory is honoured by Chinese every year in the Dragon Boat Festival.
All of the Tang poetry lines are taken from their original contexts and remixed by Waters. The line “one inch of love is one inch of [shadow]” is slightly modified Li Shangyin, while (I believe) “breaking the darkness, waking the grapevine” and “love is the shadow that ripens the vine” are Waters’ own words.
In my reading of this song, I much prefer Waters’ subtle changes as he sampled these 1200-year-old lyrics. Love is not ashes, but it is a shadow. Love exposes us to the complexity of life and the suffering of others. Shadow is vitally necessary for the process of development, but (framed as it is here at the onset of approaching dawn) it is not eternal. The shadow passes. That part is kind of important.
15 Alexander Scriabin and Alexander Nemtin, performed by Vladimir Ashkenazy and the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin – Preparation For The Final Mystery, Part 3 “Transfiguration”, finale (1903-1996, Russia/Germany)
Instrumental
The nova begins.
Project SUNWATCH successfully communicates with the alien probe.
The nova energies begin to transmute as the probe awakens.
Ok so, some background. Alexander Scriabin (1871-1915) was a moderately to excessively insane Russian Symbolist/Theosophist composer who played around with strange atonal harmonies based on his own mystical theories in order to, and I am not making this up, literally trigger the Apocalypse by performing a week-long immersive multimedia dance concert in the Himalayas that would be too awesome for the non-transcended human mind to process (and probably violate a number of health and safety codes, even by the relaxed standards of the entertainment industry). It therefore seems like a reasonable inference that he would have definitely been a New Wave musician if MTV had existed in 1915.
Fortunately for the human race, Scriabin died in 1915 before completing his Mysterium, but he left “sketches” for a “preparatory” work towards the real apocalypse. The challenge of “completing” these notes was taken up by another moderately to excessively insane Russian composer, Alexander Nemtin (1936-1999), this time armed with both Soviet Communism and the power of 1960s synths. Finally, Nemtin’s completed three-act “Preparation for the Final Mystery” was actually performed, God help us all, by a third probably only moderately insane Russian, Vladimir Ashkenazy, who is also a citizen of Iceland, and this was recorded to CD in 1996 and actually sold to human beings without a Grade Theta Psychotronic Planetary Esohazard warning label (because the Nineties and club culture), causing the Millennium, or at least Windows 98 Millennium Edition.
And this is why we are all now ascended energy beings but we are stuck running Windows 98.
Nemtin’s second and third acts of the “Preparation” have been criticised by some classical music reviewers as being “aggressively lamestream normcore” and “disappointingly, not actually apocalyptic even with a proper high-end audio Tesla coil plugged into an Overwhelmingly Large Telescope” and “sounding more like a Star Trek theme than the final cosmic dissolution of all things, half a star, would not perform on New Years Day 2000 in a Tibetan monastery while computing the Nine Billion Names of God in Visual FoxPro again”.
For your comfort and sanity we have included only one track, but it is the very last one so it probably gets to the point reasonably quickly.
I tend to think it sounds more like 2001 than Star Trek, so it makes quite a nice pairing with Andy Summers’ “Also Sprach Zarathustra”.
16 The Hollies – Song Of The Sun (1979, England) THE PROBE
Head into the sun You ain't the only one To miss the last train back to your life Head into the sun All that the night has done Will fade if you hang on really tight There's always reason for roaring down the road Every time it snows You know it's so easy to take the time to grow You know this flight is Heading into the sun Riding a little higher We are one It's just begun Song of the Sun Head into the sun You ain't the only one To blow the first few bars of the tune Head into the sun All that the night has done Will fade if you move on really soon There's always reason for putting on the wheel Every time it's real You know it's so easy to get into the feel You know this flight is Heading into the sun Riding a little higher We are one It's just begun Song of the Sun
Earth has survived and the nova energy has opened a galactic gateway. The Probe sends a signal. A reply will be expected.
Sometimes all I need is the air that I breathe and a pocket calculator with a seven-segment vacuum fluorescent numeric display.
(next in story time: Novas 6.7)
(next in release time: Novas 2.7, first module of Program Twelve)