Desert, meet the sea
songs by GREG “COSMO D” HEFFERNAN and AFTA-1
orchestrated by PETER KOWALCHUK; illustration by TORY NOLL
‘Ocean Train pt. 2’ by Greg “Cosmo D” Heffernan
‘O as Is’ by Afta-1
Conductor’s note:
Technology manifests the magical, but now only seems to bastardize it at the expense of another’s right to live in peace. At the trivial level, think of that passenger on the bus speaking into his cell phone for all to hear; at the serious level, think of the father weeping for his dead family over a home turned to ash and rubble by a smart bomb.
Twentieth century philosopher-inventor R. Buckminster Fuller called himself a “comprehensive anticipatory design scientist,” but he could have been a Taoist sage who once shared tea with Lao Tzu. Fuller called for a revolution based not on politics but on design, stressing that the success of humanity’s survival depends on how the earth’s finite resources are maintained and regulated. Let the pundits, the warmongers, and all the idolaters of ideologies naturally parade themselves into oblivion. All that mattered to Fuller was that “spaceship earth” continue its voyage free of technical difficulties around the sun. Ecology and ethics were at the heart of his thinking.
Forgive us our trespasses as we forgive those who trespass against us...
Fuller frequently revisited these words to inform his understanding of how to utilize space, and therefore his magical designs: a car capable of 180 degree turns; a collapsible home hovering above ground centered on a mast; transparent, climate-controlled domes built over cities to reduce energy consumption and costs, et cetera ... But now we are in the desert looking for water, but now we are in the desert looking for water, now we are in the desert looking for water. This edition’s theme is devoid of technological association. It is a meditation on a world stripped bare of humanity’s inventions trespassing and stripping the earth, exploiting and squandering her resources. Recall the mythical and mystical profundity of Marcel Duchamp’s most lyrical and elegiac work, “The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even” to aid your understanding. The musicians of this edition evoke an age of timelessness, a beginning and an end, as they focus on the rudiments of the earth’s composition whose physical and metaphysical realities are essential for humanity’s survival: the life-giving essence of water, the spiritual austerity of the desert.
