“Schopenhauer was right.” Right about what? The statement seemed simple and declarative, but to what end? As I pored over the newly acquired books from the Wilson library, the first thing to occur to me was the futility of my attempt to see for myself the rightness or wrongness of Schopenhauer. Having never explored philosophy prior to this occasion, I found myself hopelessly mired in its heavy, slushy esotericism. Noumenon? A priori? Thing – In – Itself? Even the term “phenomenon” didn’t seem to correspond with the Webster definition of which I was familiar. I couldn’t imagine what this Schopenhauer could possibly be right about, and worse yet, now I was acutely aware of the inadequacy of my secondary education as a preparatory step toward higher learning. My vocabulary was poor; my thoughts rudimentary; my spirits low. No sooner had I checked out the World As Will And Representation than it joined the clumping of books on the floor of my bedroom; books I had similarly fancied briefly and now disregarded and all certainly well overdue.

A month after my cursory dalliance with Schopenhauer, I was invited to a “lecture” given by a pentecostal speaker named Charles D___. Being a college freshman and exceedingly impressionable – and out there seeking many, many impressions – I attended without hesitation. This was a trippy experience! Mr. D___ was a man of Indian descent, short and wide as his stature. He had bulbous, brown eyes and large, bovine nostrils that flared wildly as he fomented a holy furor in the room that evening. People all around me convulsed spasmodically with each and every rhetorical cue delivered by Mr. D___. Occasionally, he’d reach back for that little extra and come out rushing the crowd hurling scriptural heat and spuming spittle. It was riotous (no, I didn’t misspell righteous)! What I remember most from that evening was a moment he looked in my direction. He marked me because I didn’t shake violently nor twaddle as some exorcised cantonese seraph. And as he stared me down, he buffaloed his body toward me, and exclaimed “Philosophy was wrong!” Initially, I was startled, and then bewildered. I knew nothing about philosophy, yet somehow he saw in me that damnable curiosity which had prompted the visit to the library in the prior month. Well roared, lion!

So Schopenhauer was right, but philosophy was wrong? Yes, you guessed it. It was time for me to grab that book off my bedroom floor and dig into it earnestly….with a dictionary, and a copy of the spring semester class schedule. Hmmm….Modern Philosophy 101 sounded intriguing.

There is a lot of excitement lately about the wet history of Mars, but what about Venus? Did Venus once have a climate which could support liquid water, if so where is the evidence? There are mountains, volcanoes, rift valleys, impact craters, and two small areas of slightly higher elevation which resemble continents. Any physical evidence of past water on Venus would have been wiped out by geological processes which keep the majority of the Venusian surface relatively young.

The atmosphere on Venus is composed of 96% carbon dioxide, 3% nitrogen, and the remainder (less than 1%) is made up of water vapor, sulfur dioxide, argon, and carbon monoxide. The small amounts of water vapor in the atmosphere plus the high levels of CO2 and thick clouds of sulfuric acid may well have been generated by volcanic activity.

It’s difficult to hypothesize water in substantial quantities when there is less than 1% detected in the Venusian atmosphere. Recently, Venus Express observed H+, O+, and He+ ions escaping the Venusian atmosphere. This finding could suggest that the water vapor has been stripped apart by ionizing forces such as solar radiation or electro magnetic activity over billions of years. Hydroxyl was also recently discovered (for the first time on another planet) by Venus Express. Hydroxyl is closely linked to ozone, which could potentially protect a planet from solar radiation and slow the breakup of water vapor.

So what did happen to Venus? Was it at one time more Earth-like with oceans, rivers, and lakes whose evidence was all erased by volcanic activity, or by some external catastrophic event which also put the planet into a retrograde rotation? Was all of this alleged water evaporated into space and then subsequently broken into constituent ions which then escaped into space leaving massive quantities of CO2? Or rather is the premise that there was once a large amount of water inherently wrong? Perhaps there never was water on the surface of Venus and perhaps the dense atmosphere was formed primarily by volcanic activity. One thing is certain; to conclude that Venus was previously water bearing will require further exploration into the planet’s past.

Led Zeppelin IV was released in November of 1971. A number of heavy metal standards comprise this album. Black Dog, Rock & Roll, Misty Mountain Hop and Stairway to Heaven are sovereign heavyweights in the lexicon of rock and roll. I first purchased this record in 1980. At the time, I wasn’t much of a Zeppelin fan though to be noted I wasn’t overly familiar with their catalog of work. However, shortly after I gave this album a listen I became a convert.

Percussion was my first instrument. I began playing snare drum in a marching drum corp named the Cavalets in 1974. From that experience, I learned a valuable lesson with metaphorical overtones: When marching in a parade, it is infinitely better to proceed a horsed cavalry than to follow. I subsequently went on to play drums in my junior high and high school bands. The experience of listening to John Bonham on Rock and Roll, for example, was influential on my musical life beyond estimation. The way everything in this song seems to come apart as Plant spirals the chorus back into verse, and Bonham lazily lags a beat behind the turn and then in an instant snatches back the time on the down beat of the next verse….exhilarating! From Zeppelin, I learned time is elastic as pertains to musical expression and this elasticity is paramount to creating groove.

Zeppelin IV shares a rare and notable attribute with a select few other recordings in the catalog I’ve amassed over the years: Its finale, When The Levee Breaks, is as strong a closing song as Black Dog is as an opener. From the early beginnings of album sales, bands have struggled to muster up 10 -12 songs of equal musical and lyrical strength. This difficulty is evident by the comparative strength of the first 3 or 4 songs of most albums when juxtaposed with the last 2 or 3. Fortunately, this tendency allows us the listeners to evaluate recordings quickly when deciding whether or not to purchase. For myself, if I don’t hear something compelling; some persistent hook in the first 3 or 4 songs, well….I’m not going to stay around for the floor sweepers.

It all began with a bit of graffiti on a bridge enclosure. From that point, every new discovery felt like it supplanted its antecedent. Schopenhauer led to Nietzsche who led to Husserl who led to Heidegger… Just like Led Zeppelin IV, that great album of epic scope where each song is integral to the collective effort fusing monolithic hard rock with a mystical, rustic English sensibility, each of these thinkers are essential and deeply influential to the next. When The Levee Breaks majestically brings closure to LZ4; Heidegger’s phenomenolgy fitly closes a German movement begun with Schopenhauer’s negation of the world. And for a wee freshman at the U of M circa 1984, Schopenhauer was merely a point of introduction on an otherwise long, linear line stretching on past the horizon in both directions. That bit of graffiti shook me from my remedial slumber, and onward and forward I stumbled.

To be continued…

The other evening, I listened to Zen Arcade (Husker Du for those lacking cognizance and/or familiarity with the state of punk circa 1984), and was quickly transported back to my freshman year in college. Zen Arcade came out in July of 84 as did Double Nickels On The Dime (Minuteman for those lacking….oh nevermind). Looking back, July was a remarkable month considering how seminal both of these efforts proved to be.

My freshman year of college saw many transitions in my personal development. I began college as a pre-dental major, but in short time came to a sad realization that molars, incisors and bicuspids were not nearly as compelling as Freud, Sarte and rock and roll. Fast forwarding a bit to 1986, after brief dalliances with history, theology and pastoral studies (I’ll discuss this another time), I finally settled upon philosophy as the major most likely to guarantee my future unemployment.

In 1984, I attended the University of Minnesota. The U of M is split into east and west banks separated by the Mississippi river and connected by a bi-level bridge allowing for car traffic below and pedestrian traffic above. In December of 1984, while crossing this bridge to attend a class on the west bank, I noticed a new piece of graffiti sprayed on a small, square piece of wall lining the enclosure through which students cross back and forth. It was a short message written with white paint that read, “Schopenhauer was right!” I stopped in my tracks, and began staring as if at a newly found form of tropical insect or bird. Just prior to stopping, I had put a cassette of Zen Arcade into my walkman, and so there I was, staring curiously at this unintelligible declaration in front of me while the opening chords of “Something I Learned Today” ripped through my headphones. I’d never heard of Schopenhauer, so I couldn’t attest to the rightness or wrongness of his utterances. I thought to myself, “Who is Schopenhauer, and what does he have to be right about?” I needed to find out.

I remember the air that day was bitterly cold, and my breath rolled from my nostrils like an avalanche of hoarfrost as I stood there transfixed. This was the first of many touchstone moments to come during my collegiate years. I removed a pen and notebook from my backpack, wrote down the inscription, and continued on to class. That night, I went to the Wilson Library on campus, and checked out The World As Will and Representation. A bit overmatched was I given my youth and unfamiliarity with philosophical nomenclature. Nevertheless, I never looked at the world through the same eyes again.

To be continued….