In a Dry and Waterless Place

southpole ..... January 30, 2009

I’ve had some of my most intense music experiences in this place, often while working out. (Anyone else had similar experiences at high altitude?)

Just got back from my daily workout in the darkened aerie above the gymnasium where they were playing the U2 concert film “Live in Paris: The Joshua Tree.” Songs from The Unforgettable Fire taking me straight back to freshman year, 1985: friendships and first loves… my incense-filled room across the street from the hospital where I was born; learning to program on a 256k IBM PCjr… taking my first steps on the long, strange trajectory that lead me to this work, in this place.

Music has the power to reach across time and space, to cement and trigger memory and to connect people, all in ways that film, literature and visual art cannot. I wonder if Bono & co. could have imagined during their concert in 1988 that their music would fuel the workouts of a few South Polies twenty years later. That’s the way it works, I guess… most of the time we swim in a sea of ignorance about the effects we have on each other and the world.

Time for a 20 second shower before today’s first meetings.

And who are you that reads this? In what day / year / millenium? And in what strange place?

Later: Lily White
Earlier: Immortality