A Catch In The Voice

Oh Carl Sagan.
You're a remnant.
There is no modern-day equivalent of you. Like Einstein and Feynman and others like them, you were equal parts brilliance and charisma - the link between the hard sciences and the general public.
Eloquent and charming enough to turn the dry data into perceivable wonders.
Grandiose but not overly so. Reverent but curious.

The relationship between Science and Most People has fallen into disrepair in, as Sagan put it in 1971, "this increasingly mad and dangerous world".

We need a spokesperson again, a Bill Nye for adults. Someone with enough unashamed enthusiasm to infect the public, with the credentials and stirring imagery to garner respect.

Everyone likes grand, sweeping summations of science. We all watched Planet Earth. We all watched March of the Penguins. We all watch Nova.
We love to see, to hear the wonders of the universe broken down into observable characteristics. Hopefully narrated by a trustworthy and educated guide. Morgan Freeman will do in a pinch.
We love to understand, or at least to nod our head slowly and feel, for just that 60 minute program, like we've learned something - collectively. That we, as Humans, are moving forward. Because that is our biological imperative. We need to be reassured by the intellectual elite, the Scientists, that we are Making Progress.
Because we're all busy with politics and parking meters and bake sales and True Blood, we're too bogged down with real life to do any Science ourselves, we're stuck in the dried up grass of This Side of the field.

We need a Carl Sagan to come and point out the things we should ooh and ahh at - without him, the translator, we're divided into two incompatible groups.
A small contingent of exhausted but grinning scientists holding a blurry photograph and speaking incomprehensibly among themselves, standing in front of a much larger group of busy, irritated and oh-so-slightly resentful regular people.

Without you, we cannot communicate farther than squinting at the photo and commenting on why, what with how much money it cost, we can't see a damn thing.
Which causes resentment on both sides.
Because Scientists need somebody to marvel at their work too. Everyone loves being verified, being praised.

Everyone loves Carl Sagan, aglow and professional, leading us in a sincere appreciation for both the fascinating frontiers and the secretly fascinating everyday aspects of life.
Everyone loves feeling like a little bit of both, like a contributing member of universal understanding.

Everyone loves feeling like a genius.

This is why I have a tendency to write, furiously and incomprehensibly, on my whiteboard - nay, on any available surface - when I'm absolutely boiled-as-an-owl drunk.
I want to feel that lightning sizzle of ideas making the jump from ethereal to substantial.
I'm more concerned with the feelings being produced than, say, the content, subject matter, or readability of the material at hand.

This is why it always starts off small, controlled, an actual effort by Drunk-me to jot something down for Sober-me to remember in the morning. But once I've got the pen in my hand and the blood rushing in my ears, I can't stop until I've produced something victorious. Triumphant. A work of brilliance.

A 100% illegible drunken scrawl. Usually about girls, or ice cream, or violins, or sex, or girls. Freed from the restraints of, well, comprehensible logic, I write! Pointlessly and exuberantly!
Exclamations of the night, admonishments for the future, remarks upon the past. Repetition of letters that are fun to make, pleasing to the eye. If I draw a perfect G, I'll use words with lots of g's.

It never fails to bring a smile to my face the next day, to get up and frown at something I have no recollection of writing, to try and interpret whether it's an H or a 3 or my attempt at a chinese pictogram I half made up. Or a small picture of a dragon in place of a word.

I can never understand them, and I don't copy them down before I erase them.
That isn't their function.

But everyone wants to feel like a creator, a savant, especially when they're drunk.
At least I'm keeping it private.
At least I'm not mouthing off to some dumb girl, or spouting ignorance just to boost myself up a little further that way.
Some people get this kick that way. You've seen it happen. It's awful.

It's also addictive.
It's also ultimately a letdown when you come off your drug of choice and find out you aren't the next Newton/Michelangelo hybrid.

Unless you're Carl Sagan.
There is a myth about such highs: the user has an illusion of great insight, but it does not survive scrutiny in the morning. I am convinced that this is an error, and that the devastating insights achieved when high are real insights; the main problem is putting these insights in a form acceptable to the quite different self that we are when we're down the next day.


Also, and by now you should learn to seamlessly transition from my conclusions to music mode, here is some authentic West Coast hip hop.

(Note: I am still on a drum and bass tech-house breakbeat binge but I assume by now you are sick of it. I'm nothing if not amiable.)