Someone suggested that Suss Müsik repost our contributions to the weekly Disquiet Junto projects, because they enjoy reading the explanations of the tracks. While you’re reading the original post, make sure you check out the other contributors’ works as well. This piece was executed in coordination with an eclipse-themed Art Hack Day in St. Louis, USA.
“There is no doubt that the human mind prefers order and simplicity,” wrote physicist Louise B. Young in her book The Unfinished Universe. The process of abstraction that drives Euclidean geometry was invented to help us better understand the natural world, distilling life’s complexities into simple shapes.
A solar eclipse is the most exquisite form of balance in our known universe. It is an intricate ballet of planetary alignment that doesn’t occur often and soon will never happen again. The last ever solar eclipse is scheduled to take place in 600 million years, so you still have time to buy tickets.
While plane geometry helps us understand the ‘how’ of existence, humans sometimes struggle with the ‘why.’ Suss Müsik wonders what early humans thought when they witnessed the first solar eclipse. As the sun disappeared behind the moon and the temperature dropped, did they interpret the darkening sky with a sense of foreboding?
(This might be what Klaus Nomi meant when he sang, “Blow up, everything gonna go up.” Then again, Nomi himself was something of an abstraction, a monochromatic kaleidoscope of cross-gender angularity).
Suss Müsik interpreted the first and last solar eclipses as a single event, the shared realization that we are spiritually eternal yet cosmically insignificant. The piece is performed using a combination of prepared piano, real/fake violins, a single saxophone and some electronic noise. The “eclipse” is the result of a single bass drum, itself a perfect circle, representing the end of one state and the anticipation of another.
Suss Müsik dedicates this piece to the memory of Bassel Khartabil and his family.