Jazz in Space

I have almost as much respect for billionaires as I do for Joey Chestnut, the guy who wins the hot dog-eating contest at Coney Island every Fourth of July. At least his senseless gluttony is entertaining; it’s something he works at assiduously. I find it hard to imagine eating more than two of those accursed wieners, and some days even that is two too many to contemplate. But Mr. Chestnut has gained considerable fame (and miraculously, not poundage) by cramming his face each year. I can’t bring myself to watch such a spectacle but I can appreciate the idea of it.

Billionaires hoard money without even trying. It accrues as interest even as they’re sleeping. There is nothing to watch. You might notice when they buy the company for which you’ve been working and change the signs and the stationery, and you will certainly have your attention drawn to the pink slip (or blue email) that appears in your inbox once they decide to streamline the business. At least your 2008 Nissan is paid for, and should be fine as long as the duct tape holds on the fender. You can live in that until you land on your feet. How are you fixed for shoes?

But perhaps I am prejudiced. Even as you’re considering the treads on your Chucks, billionaires are looking toward the stars. They are removed from the mundane concerns with which we are so occupied. They do more than dream about establishing colonies and perhaps malls on the moon and on neighboring planets. They are building space ships and planning to slip the increasingly surly bonds of Earth, but not before extracting all the wealth from its mineral resources. Just as you or I gnaw all the meat off the bone or scrape the bottom of the jar of peanut butter, they have to mine all the cobalt and lithium to propel them toward their stellar destinies.

It is getting a bit stuffy down here. Wildfire smoke has been drifting down from Canada again this summer. Some may quibble but it is no worse than going out to a bar in the 1980s and sitting next to a lumberjack chain smoking Marlboros. It’s fine for plebeians like us, but the billionaires are understandably fraught with the prospect of inhaling the same bad air. They expect their atmosphere to be artisanal, tinged with delicate fragrances. When they go to space, they can bring their own oxygen, unsullied by natural and industrial mishaps.

Beyond mere fleshly space travel, visionaries have long been discussing uploading the entire human consciousness into computers for a kind of digital immortality. According to Wikipedia, “In 1979, Hans Moravec described and endorsed mind uploading using a brain surgeon. He used a similar description in 1988, calling it ‘transmigration.’ … Ray Kurzweil, director of engineering at Google, has long predicted that people will be able to upload their brains to computers and become ‘digitally immortal’ by 2045 … In 1993, Joe Strout created a small website called the Mind Uploading Home Page, and began advocating the idea in cryonics circles and elsewhere.”

But whether the goal is getting out of Dodge to settle on Mars or the moons of Jupiter, or to fling one’s digitized brain-bits at distant galaxies (operating systems permitting), the question remains: What is the place of jazz in all this? Because this is a jazz publication and we need to know where this is headed.

I have oft roundly cursed Musk, Bezos, and Zuckerberg but I will beg their indulgence a moment. Do you guys expect to play your own instruments? Do you honestly believe that artificially-generated jive will prove engaging over a years-long space voyage? Yes, one can and one has driven many miles playing the same frayed mixtape until every note is etched into one’s gray matter. How long do you think even a decent playlist will sustain you? No, if you are leaving Earth you will need jazz musicians to accompany you on your journey, to boldly blow where no cat has blown before.

My friend Mark Bodē has here envisioned Rahsaan Roland Kirk playing his horns among the stars. Rahsaan translated in 1977, far too young, and too long ago to be part of this mission. There are other Rahsaans out there, equally adventurous in spirit and worthy of being included. We must take jazz to other planets, and beyond this galaxy.

The perks include getting to inhale the fancy spiced air the billionaires have exported. Whether that air will have other elements, familiar and congenial, is not for me to speculate. From what I have heard about them, they are not above indulging in those additional perfumes. Some of them are regular vipers.

More than any pharmaceutical considerations, you will be valued members of an exploratory crew. Is there jazz on other planets? Perhaps not now, but it is up to you to bring it. The unicellular life-forms you encounter may, in however a rudimentary form, dig it.

But in leaving you will certainly miss the party. You will miss the cataclysmic weather systems, the insufferable heat domes, the annual wildfires, the usual epidemics, the upheavals as dumb people fight dumber people over the last available roll of toilet paper. Some will doubt whether outer space even exists. You will be out among the stars as those you left behind tread water (or look for water to extinguish the flames, depending on what day it is).

The leaders will remind the people that this is still the best of all possible worlds, and they will pretend not to be miserable rather than face accusations of disloyalty and subversion. And all the jazz musicians who did not qualify for liftoff will be there to console them with sweet, moanful sounds.