It started with the happy coincidence about root beer and black cows. Sometimes there is one sole creature that hears you, and it makes that person especially precious in the moment.

Glad you’re in the world Fletcher. Thanks.

***

The International Geophysical Year happened when my parents were marrying, four years before I incarnated.

It

was directed toward a systematic study of the Earth and its planetary environment. The IGY encompassed research in 11 fields of geophysics: aurora and airglow, cosmic rays, geomagnetism, glaciology, gravity, ionospheric physics, longitude and latitude determinations, meteorology, oceanography, seismology, and solar activity. Because the IGY period was chosen to coincide with the maximum sunspot cycle, when solar flares and other disturbances are prevalent, research on the Sun was especially significant.

Twenty years post-incarnation, before I even became a Nightfly myself, Donald Fagen released a song about it:

I.G.Y. (What a Beautiful World)

… drawing on the title, with irony of course, of Louis Armstrong’s less cynical take on the same subject, of This World.

Standing tough under stars and stripes, we can tell
This dream’s in sight
You’ve got to admit it
At this point in time that it’s clear
The future looks bright
…

Well, by ’76 we’ll be A-OK

To the song’s narrator, the 200th anniversary of the American Republic is still decades away in the shiny theoretical promise of things to come.

But to the one who wrote and sang the song, and to us, ’76 was already six or more years in the past, and he knows that the clear bright beautiful wonderful future never happened.

To drag in a completely unrelated lyric from a couple days ago, shining a light from the side, the relationship between the two, and between them and us, runs thus:

“Maybe we oughta help him see
The future ain’t what it used to be.”

(Maybe just maybe I oughta too.)

And then to the same sweet lullaby of a tune, the true darkness of the new techno-reality is hinted at, implied.

A just machine to make big decisions
Programmed by fellas with compassion and vision
We’ll be clean when their work is done
We’ll be eternally free, yes, and eternally young

Think of it.

The best and the brightest, the compassionate Visionaries, will program a machine to make all our decisions for us.

A Skynet.

And as a result, WE will be cleansed …

Bathed in the promise of the american dream; always Free.

Bathed in the blood of the lamb; forever Young.

You and I can read between those lines bitterly, can’t we baby?

There is nothing left but to mindlessly repeat the bland chorus over and over like drones, which is exactly what most people do most of the time. Especially during Ice Cream Month and any given Float Day …

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free
What a beautiful world this will be
What a glorious time to be free

If I were a great sage producing great art, like Fagen himself, I would leave it there.

***

But instead I’m going to fuck things up with one last small and indulgent observation.

Just before the Just Machine walks onto the stage of this song, there’s one last sliver of lyric slipped into the background vocals … one last barely audible false promise, of

(More leisure for artists everywhere)

Listen for it next time, because the Donald put it there for you and me especially.

For the artists themselves, who might be tempted to fall for the pretty Lies too.

For the actual compassionate visionaries, who are and will be so often tempted to succumb to the tempting surrender of giving up and leaving the drones to drone without cease until the end of time.

It helps me to see, and it helps me to say

Fuck that.