New Dawn, Nate

Can anything truly be new in a system of cycles?

The symbolic power of dawn is clear to anyone with eyes, skin, and functioning nerves. Its metaphoric capabilities have been maintained for as long as humankind has held the capacity for metaphor.

When did humans become "humans"? When did that leap occur? It must have occurred in an instant. Who was the first? What did they feel? For more on this concept, please see the novel The Giver.

Light research suggests that the distinction of "humanity" occurred somewhere between five and seven million years ago, and that the specific bioclassical Rubicon was crossed when ape-like creatures somewhere in the larger Cradle of Civilization started to "habitually" walk on two legs. Somewhere in the way back, someone—no longer a "thing," but a "one"—was the first to push themselves up and amble. Did their legs waver like a fawn's? Did their steps shuffle close together like a flightless seabird? How long did it take for them to walk, to stride, to run? What did the other things—not yet but soon to be "ones"—feel when they saw this? Did they feel at all, in a way we can articulate or understand now?

Further-but-still-extremely-spartan-research suggests that mind came into play around 130,000 years ago. So we'd been up and at it for a while, knocking rocks together and what have you, when the first brain was large enough to convey in a distant-but-still-related to the way our minds work today, something like a thought. Maybe "this rock is heavy." Seems as likely as anything else. Probably even simpler. "I'm hungry." "I want to have sex with that one over there." "I am afraid."

The dawn (here again the power of the metaphor in action) of culture, of when behaviors began to reflect what archaeologists would consider modern in the sense that they bear some level of recognizable similarity to the organizing principles of today: no one seems to agree. Some people believe it happened about 40,000 years ago when our proto-brethren pushed into what is now understood to be Europe. I have not looked it up, but I suspect those who hold that belief are likely European.

Here's a quote that boggles the mind a little bit: "The earliest Homo sapiens probably had the cognitive capability to invent Sputnik, but they didn't yet have the history of invention or a need for those things." What might we create if we only manufactured the need?

Here's another quote that boggles the mind a little bit, or at least boggles a mind: "In spite of endless war, extinction-level events, depredation and plague, every one of your ancestors survived to reproductive age. The probability that you are even here is next to none." This is one of those cases where it is better to take math and probability at an idiot's level and say that all things have a 50/50 chance of happening; either they do or they don't. To engage with this concept otherwise will give me a tummy ache.

I abhor writing about jazz. I abhor writing about my feelings about jazz, because they are fixed and will not change regardless of what jazz I am exposed to. All jazz is measured on the scale of "being jazz," which means that even the greatest stuff will not register above a certain level of "this is probably great but to me I just hear fine." Some small talk to consider next time you wish to fill an empty, quiet moment next to a stranger: "How's the weather?" "What's new with you?" "What do you think of that jazz album?"

So, fuck, whatever: there are big-band elements, there are classic soul elements, there are acid/freakout moments that never quite blossom into full Alice Coltrane horseshit. It comes and it goes and on this particular shore recedes with the tide leaving no trace behind, another sandcastle wiped out in another new dawn.

I'll tell you who is better at this kind of thing is Z.Subes. He just lets his feelings flow out onto the page with courage and conviction. He edits his words but not his feelings. I am sure he corrects his writing but never corrects himself. I would love to achieve that kind of freedom someday. That freedom will not be found in jazz, for me. I prefer my other dead genres, thanks. This review is over.