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2021 0327 tallhead

Here’s an odd experiment. I started on my sketchpad with a small rectangle.It seemed to want a guitarist, his upper body breaking through the boundary of the rectangle with his head and strumming hand and guitar. Another rectangle below had his right leg break that rectangle’s border. His name would be Tallhead, and he was playing so well he was warping space/time around him. But his bandmate, one Clarissa Pealing, provided vocals so transcendent they attracted the attention of a Goddess in another firmament.

So I would describe this extraordinary event with bizarre, variable calligraphing. At first I thought this was a new wrinkle, but then I remembered my teenage read of Alfred Bester’s The Stars My Destination, wherein Gully Foyle’s kinesthetic sense made hybrid sensations jump off the page. I now tip my hat to sf grandmaster Bester. His friends called him Alfie.

The entire text, transcribed:

t.r.o.c.t. & d.f.v.

the riffing of Conrad Tallhead made local space/time subdivide

BUT it was the DIVINE foreground vocals of Tallhead’s bandmate
c l a r i s s a p e a l i n g
that BURST THRough
our very Firmament
& got a Goddess’s
attention!!!!

Some life events, rock concerts included, seem worthy of the note of celestial beings. At least they do to this humble human.

20181021_091443

Well over 50 years ago science fiction grandmaster Alfred Bester invented the earworm in his novel THE DEMOLISHED MAN. The quotation I’ve calligraphed in one such. In a society of telepathy, this odd and resonant ditty was intended to baffle mind-probers who wanted secrets.

Bester’s jingle is well stuck in my head. Often when I am walking it pops up and matches the rhythm of my steps. When I am tired it helps–kind of pulls me along.

Nowadays, though, “tension, apprehension, and dissension have begun” takes on a more ominous, even apocalyptic, imbuement. These are interesting times indeed.