To not see a man’s eyes is hardly ever a comfortable thing. Take off your sunglasses if you want me to talk to you.

Giving is receiving, yet people are people wherever you go.

Forgive me for getting didactic on your ass, but I’m about to.

Electricity always goes to ground. So automatically, being “grounded”, looks like a bad thing.

I’ve lifted the ground, flopped the phase and inverted polarity. I have a friend who invented a device that allows for the shifting of polarity at any point along 180 degrees of the protractor. Other than that, I’ve devoted very little effort and much less time to the idea.

Fuck that. As a former electron director, I was obsessed with phase. Still am. Enough to feel guilty. I was a phase fag.

I dreamt about it last night. I wasn’t good at it. Woke up despondent. Cold feet, sweaty brow. Today kinda sucked.

It’s a tricky thing. It borders on Voodoo. Put the batteries in the remote incorrectly, effectively opposing the crest to trough relationship on which the appliance is designed to operate, and the circuit functions not at all. Drag. Might take you awhile to figure out if you’re baked.

Tesla invented the polyphase motor, making alternating current (AC) far more practical, efficacious and safe than Edison’s model for the distribution of electricity, direct current (DC).

Had Edison prevailed, it would have really sucked. We’d all been killed.

Mustard and pickles always on a grilled cheese. Always.

Flop the phase on the kick drum or bass guitar right before you print and sometimes the bottom end of the mix blooms or at least tightens. Sometimes Pandora’s box yawns long into nightmare. Polarity can be a drum of serpents.

I can’t tell you how many engineers I worked with that had no concept of phase. Any given piano in any given contemporary recording is at least forty five to ninety degrees out. If you reverse polarity and can’t hear a difference, you’re probably ninety degrees out. Do the math.

Wanna hear good phase on a piano? Fiona Apple, “Tidal”. That’s a large piano.

Well paid engineers, with two microphones literally facing each other and never even looking at the button on either module. That used to kill me.

I promise I’m going somewhere with this. Can you tell I like my subject?

Word has it the earth’s magnetic field may be inversing. The last such event, the “Brunhes-Matuyama reversal”, occured some 780 thousand years ago. Planet earth may be on the verge of reversing it’s polarity. It’s like the world is changing it’s own mind.

Speculation as to the effects are exploding. Migrating birds, fish and mammals suddenly unable to find their way. Dogs and cats living together. Republicans voting Democrat. Photomats making a comeback. Seismic events. Volcanic stuff.

I don’t worry about it because there’s nothing I can do.

On the other hand………

Almost without reservation, I welcome the rather dramatic shift in American politics that’s manifested over the last few years. Americans, indeed people in general, are reluctant to change, much less throw everything into reverse.

Now, with what appears to be a near consummate abruptness, people seem willing at least, to subsume drastic new direction. A can of beer for each of you.

No secret there, it’s because it’s all so completely fucked up.

Change is hard and not always good. Don’t doubt that it can be necessary. This movement is beyond necessary. It is vital. Our last best chance? We have long since lead the world in cutting off our noses, to spite or perhaps despite , our own faces. Incredibly reckless and self destructive behavior.

Fucking stupid.

We’ve behaved like dope fiends. An appropriate metaphor for how difficult, Herculean, this change will be, is that of a crackhead. Time for rehab kids. If you’re successful, you’ll alter your entire intellectual construct in order to exclude this addiction. You will change your own mind.

It will not be without considerable sacrifice and pain. The most pious and indoctrinated among you will suffer the most. It will, however, touch us all.

With that, some luck and hope or maybe your God, the crests and troughs will begin to align with more congruency, coherence and maybe cooperation. See what I’m saying?

Forty five degrees to right of north on the old oscilloscope.

For those of you who don’t understand or haven’t yet busted a move; “phase” is the best analogy. The simplest. This way or that way. Allowing greed, “values” and fear to dominate our very conversations about how we should and would be governed has been Democracy’s biggest mistake. As I write this, it is exactly why we are so fucked. Time to hit that button and walk the other way.

It’s trite, but one definition of insanity is performing the same action over and over while expecting a different result.

This one’s for Don Carlson.

Drinks for my friends.

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