Cosmic Reminders And Evolutionary Impulses
How Stanley Kubrick's "2001: A Space Odyssey" and Pink Floyd's "Echoes" Changed My Life, And Why We Need Evolutionary Cosmic Reminders Now More Than Ever
If ever there was a time in my life when devolutionary forces seem to be dominating the story of Human History, it’s certainly right now in April of 2022.
I’m not talking about the classic definitions in which power is transferred from a centralized government to less powerful regional governments geographically distant from each other. If anything, powerful central governments are now moving towards abdicating power to an even larger global entity. NATO expansionism is an indicator, along with alliances like the EU.
I’m talking about spiritual and empathetic demise amongst the current global population at this time.
Consider that the world’s wealthiest, and most powerful people, in a recent televised conference, are now “advising” governments around the world, allegedly from a “neutral, objective, and analytical perspective” on how to implement digital currencies. Obviously, this is not a new concept, but the worlds wealthiest won’t tolerate any currency that can’t be regulated, taxed, controlled, and ultimately used as a weapon against the wider poulation. Financial sanctions are weapons in the new proxy wars.
This collective has little or nothing to say about the current downward spiral of human misery and spiritual detachment brought about by the deliberate expansion of global war, economic inequality, and the purposeful spread of a very dangerous disease in the form of SARS-CoV-2. Instead, they offer slickly produced videos advertising a seemingly benign concept called “The Great Reset”. Note that commentary is turned off. This is not a time for feedback or protest. The message is one way only.
They offer no perspective of how we got here, they simply mirror the dystopia and misery back at us, and with soothing, dulcet tones, in a disconcerting, oddly detached manner, they tell us that everything is going to be alright. There is nothing to fear, we’re here to help and advise. “Yes, dear, I know things are bad, just close your eyes and dream of The Great Reset to come.” Your fears are assuaged. This is what passes for hope for evolution in 2022. There are implications that the answers are at hand.
I was 11 years old in April of 1968, and despite having a child’s concept of events in the world, I could feel the swirling possibilities and excitement of the human race. Something was in the air. You had to be there and feel it to understand. It was something unheard and unspoken but deeply felt. Vibratory. It was reflected in Music, Art, Film, and Television. It was Jimi Hendrix to Star Trek. It was young people saying that war was a choice, not a necessity. Hope amidst war, economic drudgery, raw survival, and racial turmoil.
In the late 60s, the Apollo space program was a miracle of modern technology, mathematics, courage, grit, and determination. America seemed to be doing something that was so extraordinary, so outside of the realm of past human achievement, that it felt like we were being propelled into a Utopia with boundless reward, free from the chains of earthbound existence.
With that backdrop, I started hearing through my weekly perusal of the newspaper, of an outer space-themed movie that was coming soon to theaters. I knew absolutely nothing about Stanley Kubrick and his prior masterpieces of film. At that time, there was no way to see art except on rare occasions via physical attendance. What I read in the newspaper became a growing obsession to see the film as soon as possible. It was playing to sold-out audiences around the planet. This is literally what I saw in the newspaper at the time, and week after week, I grew more impatient. It felt like something bigger than a movie.
So in May of 1968, my father drove me and my sister to the Westhampton Theater in Richmond, Virginia to finally see what all the excitement was about. I remember entering the semi-darkened theater, the soft whir of air conditioning, a plush, comfortable chair, and hearing eerie music permeating the audio space. This was something, If I recall correctly, that Kubrick insisted on, in order to prepare and involve the viewer fully in an overwhelming sensory experience before it occurred.
The entire movie, from start to finish was exactly that. With its stunning visuals and otherworldly music, most viewers, even kids like myself, felt like they had visited an alternate reality without the aid of LSD, mushrooms, or psychedelics. You were left blinking, short of breath, and shaking. It was a cosmic reminder that there are greater things.
There have been many astute and incisive analyses of the film and its meaning. From my humble perspective as a child, it meant, in feelings I couldn’t quite articulate, that what we were doing in real life, in terms of going to the moon, was completely evolutionary. Humanity’s existential crises, across eons of time, were something we could not, and would not ever solve, except through looking outward. Even from an 11-year-old perspective, I got it. We had never been in control and we never would be.
The film and its accouterments, especially the novel written by Science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, and the soundtrack featuring contemporary performances of composers like Gyorgi Lygeti and Johann Strauss were mind-blowing. I played it over and over to try to recreate the experience of seeing the movie for the first time. I read the novel twice, then a third time, to try to decipher a secret I hadn’t uncovered on first viewing the movie. It was, literally, a force that was driving me over many years to seek a vast, broader reason for human existence.
Despite the triumphs of multiple landings on the Moon, it was soon apparent, especially with the assassinations of visionary leaders from Kennedy to King, the expansion of the Vietnam war, and feeble political attempts to eradicate poverty and promote racial equality, the evolutionary impulse had died. We went from cheering on the space program and outward expansion, to moon landings largely becoming geological expeditions and reduced gravity fun. Not to minimize the importance of the unprecedented geological study, but we basically turned the moon mission into driving around, collecting rocks, kangaroo hopping, and playing golf. Even to this day, terming hitting golf balls as “Science” seems to be a rather depressing denouement to the space program.
Seeing the comments in 2022, like “Awesome! First sports in space!” reminds me of the same deflating feeling I had as I moved into being a teenager in the 70s. I went inward and forgot all about expansion into multiverses. That is, until my discovery of Marijuana and music.
It wasn’t uncommon, as disaffected teenagers amongst a subgroup of peers, to smoke incredible amounts of pot, then sit and intensely listen to music. Usually, this was done in an automobile with a tape deck. As strange as it sounds, an inner sanctum or chapel of sorts.
In terms of authoritarians in society, behavior like this was equated with lawlessness, criminality, lack of ambition, and anti-social tendencies. The slow and gradual decriminalization of marijuana, with legalization and commercial dispensaries, was unimaginable then. You parked the car as far away as you could get from society and law enforcement to have some peace and solitude.
Some of my friends had discovered music that went incredibly well with this type of occupation by an up-and-coming English band called Pink Floyd. It was at that time I first heard a magnum opus called “Echoes”, which took up an entire album side in the vinyl format.
I can literally remember, as if we were conducting a religious ritual in a trance state, listening to this masterpiece in a friend’s car, and realizing that someone, in the person of Roger Waters, was saying something cosmically deep and meaningful. The musical genius of David Gilmour, Richard Wright, and Nick Mason created a literal mind movie (with the enhancement of marijuana and dark space) that seemed eerily reminiscent of the cosmic story created by Clarke and Kubrick. I suddenly felt that the positive evolutionary impulses created by 2001 were again realized in this one piece of music.
I have owned various copies of the album/song over many years, and despite growing old, I still listen to Echoes (minus the weed) obsessively. I wasn’t ever able to let go of the feelings and thoughts it evoked. It was like a DNA imprint. It was Roger Waters examining the Universe of the Ocean, the bulk of the planet, and pondering evolution. It was an audio representation of the first steps of one-celled organisms in the sea evolving and crawling to land.
To be honest, I sort of hid my obsession with “Echoes” as sort of an embarrassing remnant of juvenile behavior in the past.
So it is completely encouraging and exciting, in my view, to see some younger people today fully embracing the unique evolutionary musical statement that is “Echoes”. This is a great analysis and validates feelings I’ve had over many years.
The meaning of “Echoes” is far more than a musical excursion. I couldn’t really articulate at the time (but this exceptional video does) that Empathy over Antipathy, Commonality, and rejecting the interests of the selfish individual over the common good is vital to not only our survival but evolution.
Once again, we seem to be at a tipping point. I am struck by the fact that there is nothing that really unites us in empathy and sustains us. Something that focuses us to think outside of our raw survival.
Despite the largely powerless bulk of humanity loudly protesting against devolutionary tendencies implemented by authoritarian power structures we seem helpless and divided. We can’t stop war, we are disinformed and divided, and we are being killed in greater numbers daily through antipathy towards global disease.
I hope, if naively, that somehow, there can be something tapped that is deeper with us to make us head towards the evolutionary path that can defuse the existential crises we face. The current road, devoid of empathy and full of diversion and self-promotion and competition is unsustainable.