Eclipse Country
Journey of a Would-be Cosmic Cowboy
Cultures across recorded history, and most certainly before, noticed when the sky went dark. As the giver and source of all things, the temporary erasure of the sun seemed portentous. However, interpreting the event was always ambiguous at best. Could it be a message from the gods, an omen of doom, or the rebirth of the world?
How silly of our ancestors to be so benighted. Today, we understand that just as the hands of a clock will inevitably align, the passing of the earth’s sole satellite at just the right distance to visually block the sun’s photosphere (but not the corona) is the inevitable result of gravity and – wait for it – happenstance. The moon doesn’t have to be that size or that distance. It just so happens to be perfectly positioned to regularly provide a remarkable light show to a small strip of land on the planet’s surface. How lucky are we?
Color me skeptical of our modern skepticism. Einstein showed how our material world is a simple function of energy in concentrate. E=mc^2 tells the story of how every bit of mass you encounter, in all its forms, states, and manifestations can be converted to energy. And as his predecessor Newton observed, these masses constantly act upon each other in an exchange of potential energy through a force called gravity. But that is not the end of the story. We now detect the presence of Dark Matter and Dark Energy. The formulas and equations only grow in complexity – beyond the understanding of a lay person – but they all point to a spooky, quantum connection among all things. So pardon me if I do not buy the assertion that the gravitational alignment of the largest bodies of mass in our cosmic vicinity in which every bit of solar energy bound for a particular region is blocked for a short but distinct period of time is without consequence.
Again, interpretation is another matter. We are mere apes with limited sensory capacity standing in the shadow of a celestial passage. But we are also not rocks. We sense, feel, and move through the world with a degree of agency. We create and destroy, produce and consume, direct and absorb the flow of energy in our vicinity. So while precisely prescribing the significance of a given solar eclipse is a fool’s errand, perhaps there is a way we might find intimations of its influence on human life?
For this, I would not look for signs in politics or personal developments. While these may experience impacts downstream, they are far too corrupted by frailty, fear, and circumstance to get at anything approaching a cosmic understanding. We need to get closer to the source. Instead, I propose we look toward that human pursuit that is most evanescent, most connected to our harnessing and projection of ephemeral vibrations. We must look to the art form we call music.
Geography also counts. The paths of totality for an eclipse might be the least cryptic clue we have. In the last six months, two eclipses have crossed North America, which I repeat is extremely rare. Rarer still would be a single point that sits in the paths of totality for both. And if “X” marks the spot, it begs the question: what the hell is going down in Texas?
“This ain’t Texas'' is the opening line of Beyonce’s first single off her new album. Her recent country music turn arrived with the conspicuousness of an eclipse over the American musical landscape. For a brief period, it was all that anyone could see or talk about. On the week of the eclipse, three of the top ten songs on the Billboard Hot 100 came off her “Cowboy Carter'' album. But rather than a standalone event, this is more appropriately seen as the high-water mark of one particularly in-tuned artist’s creation amidst a rising tide of cultural forces.
First of all, this ain’t Beyonce’s first rodeo. The Texas-born singer was behind one of the best country songs of the 2010’s with “Daddy Lessons”. Her full country album arrives in a year that Post Malone is covering Hank Williams at the Ryman Auditorium and Lana Del Rey announced that she was mining country music for her next gold record. While the confluence of music trends of the moment and the paths of totality may seem to point to a reason for the current surge in the popularity of Country music, the trends on the Billboard charts should be regarded as subject to the same kinds of corruption as politics, and with the same skepticism, when it comes to divining the implications of an eclipse. The popping of pop stars offers no deeper cosmic insight than the froth of a wave tells us of the activity under the ocean. No, we need to go deeper, look closer, tap the roots. After all, that intersection point of the eclipses – the X in Texas – doesn’t even include Beyonce’s hometown of Houston.
To gain a greater understanding of the universal symphony in which we all play a few notes, I went to Kerrville, TX. Kerrville not only lies at the precise point where both paths of totality met for the two most recent solar eclipses, it is truly hallowed ground in the American musical landscape. It hosts the longest continuously running music festival in the United States. Songwriters from Texas and beyond make pilgrimages to play in the annual, 18-day Kerrville Folk Festival. The late, great Townes Van Zandt officiated weddings there. Attendees include children and geriatrics, hippies and cowboys, the partiers and the pious. Unlike some other festivals, people don’t come to Kerrville to be seen in cool outfits, they come for the music.
However, it is not the playbill that makes this festival hum. Each night, after the stage goes dark, when the stars fill the sky, only then can an attendee truly attune to the frequency of the space we inhabit. Campsites throughout the festival grounds form impromptu jam sessions in which all manner of musicians meet to share songs with friends and strangers.
In this age of alienation, mediated communication, and the digital data mining of consumption, the “Kerrclipse” edition of the Kerrville Folk Festival represented its antithesis. Authenticity is a complicated concept, but it is unmistakable when a person is confronted with it. In Kerrville, the making of music isn’t just authentic, it is primordial. Bluetooth speakers are not allowed on the festival grounds. Digital distortion is non-existent. Every sound comes from physically striking a string or blowing through a reed.
I showed up as a first-timer, by myself with just a banjo. Within minutes of setting up camp, I was invited into circles of song. Sometimes a person plays a song solo, sometimes a whole circle spontaneously joins in adding accompaniment and inserting solos between verses. Through three days and nights of the festival leading up to totality, the tethering power of music formed a web of inexpressible connection among the people on the Quiet Valley Ranch of Kerrville.
We live in disconnected times. Our primary tools of sharing information all seem to lead to further misunderstanding. Discord grows unabated across generations and geography. Yet in this moment, at the pinpoint of totality for two solar eclipses, there existed a place where harmony and shared experience fell into a rhythm. From this, one can begin to understand how music remains the means of communication most capable of connecting us with our universal spirit. The categorizing commercialization of genres and attempts to capitalize on music may attempt to break its universality. People will wear the shirts of belonging to this or that musical tribe and argue how one artist is great and another is a hack. But any practitioner and every soul touched by these sonic vibrations is aware of its fundamental power.
It cannot be proven, observed, or measured, but when the moment came for the moon to pass between us and our sun, the web we assembled over three days and nights functioned something like an array antenna directed to absorb the energetic influence of the phenomena we were to witness. Precisely what meaning was relayed from the cosmic alignment remains as mysterious as before, but each person present in that space absorbed and now carries with them a fragment of its message.
Love this, Colin. It was definitely a cosmic experience for me, too. I’ve passed it along to the rest of the Camp Bite Me crew. I hope we’ll see ya at big folk? Xo
This is very good. You and I are on the same page, it seems....
https://brianhoward.substack.com/p/the-miracle-of-the-universe