Late yesterday afternoon
I made entries in
The notebook where I record
Information on my books,
Such as when I got them
And who the author is,
That I had finished
Far Future Calling by Olaf Stapledon
(Which features a story in which
There's a conversation across time
With people from the future)
And I was starting
Frost and Fire by Roger Zelazny
For some reason
I began wandering through the notebook,
Which has entries all the way back to 1975
On one page
The name "La Jolla" leapt out at me
I had begun a list of coincidences
Encountered across material being read --
At the time I was experimenting with
Reading a small passage from one item
And then a passage from another,
And so on across a few dozen books
The experiment broke down
When I couldn't put down Ox by Piers Anthony
The list with "La Jolla" was very short,
Having only three entries
(In another notebook I have another list),
And the first is "La Jolla,"
Which appeared in two books that day,
Explorations in Cognition
And Psychic Exploration
The date of the coincidence was November 17, 1975
Today is February 3, 1996
And I've been living in La Jolla since 1988,
Attending UC San Diego
Early yesterday evening
I started watching a 1952 black-and-white movie
With Cary Grant, Ginger Rogers, and Marilyn Monroe
Called Monkey Business,
Which I had taped in the wee hours the night before
In the middle of the movie,
Ginger Rogers,
Under the influence of
An experimental drug that makes people younger,
Supposedly brewed by scientist Cary
But actually concocted by lab chimp Esther,
Suggests to husband Cary that they go dancing
They have a very long drive
Because she wants to return to the site of their honeymoon --
La Jolla
This morning I was reading Science with breakfast
And an article began with
"La Jolla, California" in boldface
The article was about several top scientists
Banding together to start a new field,
The study of the origins of life on Earth,
Including Stanley Miller,
Who had become famous in 1953
For helping create amino acids in a test tube
After simulating conditions on early Earth --
The "primordial soup" that was the sea
(This account was originally entitled "Jewel School,"
Then "Surf Monkeys Exploring the Origins of Life on Earth in the La Jolla Sun,"
And is now finally "Monkey Sea" --
After I settled on this title
I recalled that The Reegs
Have an album called "Return of the Sea Monkeys" --
There's a cut on it called "Pond Life")
This afternoon I finished making
A series of tapes with "sun" in the song titles
I had started a couple of weeks ago
And hadn't really done much more until last night
The third and final tape needed
About ten minutes of filler at the end
So I started with Jimi Hendrix's
"Third Stone from the Sun,"
Which I had thought of using as filler from the beginning,
Aware that it wasn't on my play list
Because it was rated too low
During that song I noticed Jimi,
In his role as UFO occupant
Flying by the third planet from the Sun,
Singing about how he "hoped he never heard surf music again"
That gave me an idea for
What to follow up with -- some surf music,
Specifically maybe "Pipeline" and "Penetration"
There was only one problem --
I only have "Penetration" on a 45
And all my 45's are packed in boxes
And not very accessible
I ended up finishing the tape with
An Alice in Chains cut
And the beginning of a Catherine Wheel cut,
Both of which were 3-'s (rated pretty low)
But had "sun" in their titles,
And filed the tape away upstairs
A little while later
I was thinking about how I wasn't thrilled
With the tape ending with lower-level songs
And pondered what I could replace them with
Then I remembered the surf song idea
I did have "Pipeline" on CD,
But rather than just tape it as is,
It would be more fun
And better fill the remaining tape
If I recorded it on as a very slowed-down version,
The way I used to listen to it as a teenager
Back then I had a turntable that had four speeds --
16, 33, 45, and 78 RPM
The "Pipeline" 45 at 16 RPM sounded way cool
As I read Edgar Rice Burroughs books,
New nuances of sound emerging at such a slow speed
And I knew how to recreate that effect
With my current equipment
Even though the turntable I use now
Only has two speeds -- 33 and 45
The trick is play the 45 at 33,
Recording that onto reel-to-reel
At one of its higher speeds
(It has three,
The middle one twice the slowest,
And the fastest twice the middle one),
And then play that back at half speed --
In effect one-half of 33, or 16 and 1/2 RPM,
Close enough to 16 RPM
Only one problem --
Digging out the old 45
Instead of using the CD
But it was worth a try,
And I had added incentive --
I was planning a new series of tapes
With "heaven," "lord," and "god" in their titles
And one of the very first songs
Was "Closer to Heaven" by Argent,
Which I only have on 45
So, I got out the boxes with the 45's
And it wasn't hard to find the ones I wanted after all
Great! All set...
Except that the reel-to-reel
Wasn't cooperating
I hadn't used it in so long
And it's so old and tired
(I bought it used 20 years ago)
That it refused to record
At the higher speeds
I tried three or four times
And it kept misbehaving
I was about to throw in the towel
But tried one more approach
And this time it worked
The recording went well
And the tape was finished with
A super-slow version of "Pipeline"
I must have spent a half hour
Fiddling with the equipment
To finally get this idea realized
Now it was time to leave
To meet my friend Beth at the new
Mission Valley 20 movie complex
For a late matinee of 12 Monkeys,
Starring Bruce Willis, Madeleine Stowe, and Brad Pitt,
In which characters travel from the future to our time
In one case, Bruce leaves a phone message
For the people in the future
And moments later someone from there
Shows up in response to the message
At one point in the movie
There was a brief flash of a scene
From an old black-and-white Marx Brothers movie
And the title of the movie appeared --
Monkey Business
Later in 12 Monkeys
Bruce and Madeleine were driving
And a song came on the radio,
Which they listened to in its entirety --
Pipeline
