I assembled the team for the first time, down in San Diego. I also invited my old friends, Astrobiology Bob and Science-bitch Trudy, two scientists I’ve known for decades, and well enough that I didn’t care if they knew/thought I was crazy. The thin premise was to discuss a made-up organism for educational purposes. Possible feedback mechanisms, forms of communication, signals, whatever. Our goal was to generate hypotheses and ways to test them.
At first introduction, Dennis recognized Kaiakea’s name. “Immeasurable sea. The Hawaiian language is so beautiful, such a shame it’s been slipping away.” She is charmed and said something back to him in Hawaiian I couldn’t follow. I am impressed.
I begin, “I suppose you’re all wondering why I’ve gathered you here today. Sorry, I have to say that line every time I use this posh new conference room. I love this shiny elliptical table. You’ve all read my proposal. So, let’s start from there.”
“Yes, Dr. Lipschitz, I read your proposal with enthusiasm, though with some perplexity. To gain insight, I even tried to run it through my Finnegan’s Wake algorithm. I’m afraid it failed to find much symmetry and higher-level structure, though I’m sure my algorithm needs some recalibration. But I jest. As I told you, my BS detector is suffering from a Gödelian dilemma.”
Trudy: “Your BS detector didn’t work on Lipschitz’ proposal? I can help.”
Astro Bob: “Gödel proved that consistent systems cannot be complete and vice versa. So I think what Dennis is saying is that your proposal could either be inconsistent BS or complete BS.”
“Thank you, everyone. This is very productive.”
“I think your proposal is amazing,” said Kaiakea, the Sea Bunny, placidly. “It resonates with me deeply. I have always believed that something like this must exist.”
Trudy shoots her an “are-you-for-real?” look.
“Thank you, Kai, but let’s all get past whether my basic premise is BS or not. Let’s assume such a being exists and work from there. What I’d like to accomplish today is to brainstorm on the most logical traits we’d expect from a vast and ancient abyssal-dwelling neural network originally derived from microbial cells. Physiology, ecology, genetics, life history, modes of communication, whatever. So much of this first phase of research is just sorting through incredibly complex data sets. If we had some more specific hypotheses to guide our search it would be super helpful. And please help yourselves to coffee and snacks. Bob brought some very nice vegan banana bread.”
I went to the white board and wrote Huge Ancient Sea Brain is Ancient and Huge. “I’m assuming this thing is ancient enough to have survived multiple cataclysmic episodes in Earth’s history. How does it do this?”
Everybody spoke at once. On the white board, I managed to write down:
Survival of catastrophe requires:
- Dormancy structures: backup storage modules, seeds?
- Flexible metabolism (energy source, terminal electron acceptor)
- Biogeoengineering to jumpstart recovery of marine ecosystem?
“Seeds. Excellent. Except it’s not just enough to grow a new individual – memory, culture has to survive. How would an enormous brain back up its memories without computers or books? I assume it has to be coded in DNA somehow.”
Astro Bob spoke up, “But what about other forms of information storage? The brain stores memories in the geometry of its neural connections. Couldn’t the geometry be preserved even if the cells die?”
Sea Bunny, “right, and then the new neurons could regrow along the same pathways.”
I had not thought of that. “Cool, I had not thought of that. That could totally work for smaller disturbances, like lack of food or oxygen. But for really catastrophic events, like an earthquake, or climate changes that require a really long down time, this could be a risky strategy. Remember that we’re assuming it’s highly skilled in biotechnology, because…”
“Because you have no evidence of any other form of technology,” said Trudy snarkily, “and so it must be biotechnology by fiat.”
“No, Trudy, I never said it drives a Fiat. Ancient and Huge Sea Brain is Smart, and has had the full array of marine biodiversity available to tinker with for millions of years. But yes, until we started this project, no previous survey of the abyssal zone would have discovered or recognized its biotechnology. Come on, didn’t you like my myelin proteolipid data? Eukaryotic brain protein clearly surrounded by bacterial sequences?”
“Actually, I do like that data. But there are SO MANY other explanations than an…’Abyssal Ganglia’…”
Astro Bob intervened, “Come now, Trudy, let’s indulge the lad’s Gedanken experiment!”
I added, “Yes, just roll with it Trudy, we’re playing what if? So back to DNA. What would a back-up of a network look like encoded in DNA?”
Dennis spoke thoughtfully, “There are efficient ways of representing networks using network and graph theory. How much information needs to be stored?”
“Well, in the human brain, we have about 100 billion neurons, and each is connected to an average of about 1000 others, though some have at least 10,000 connections…”
“Purkinje!” Shouted Astro Bob.
“Yes, Pinky. Purkinje cells are an excellent example. Ahem. So, for each neuron we need to specify its connections. Also, the connection strength between neurons varies, so there has to be a strength term. The last I heard, in humans they currently think there are about 26 discrete states for connection strength. Let’s give our thing a few more.”
We did some calculations. “So, the amount of DNA contained in a single human cell, about 3 Gigabases could code almost 1 gigabyte, and that would back up about a quarter of a million neurons.”
Sea Bunny got excited, jumped up to the white board and started drawing an ornate diagram that looked like a space flower. I noticed Astro Bob looking at her flawless ass. That was very bad of him.
“These cells could be packed into spores with many cell layers, so that each cell in the spore encodes for a cluster of a quarter-million neurons. All the cells in the outer layer of the spore code for clusters of peripheral neurons that are lower in the hierarchy. The next layer codes for higher level clusters that connect the primary clusters, which are connected at higher levels by the inner layers, and so on. At the core of the spore is the master cluster that integrates all the lower levels. For fun, I’m going to give it a Giant Eyeball.”
We did some more calculations. I summarized, “So in a spore about one centimeter in diameter, you could fit about one exabyte (1018 bytes). About 1000 times bigger than a human brain, with millennia of experience included.”
“All in the size of an acorn,” Dennis remarked.
Kaiakea gestured at her space flower drawing, “A single acorn could expand into something like this, which could be as small as a coral or a sponge colony. And of course, this would be just one node in an entire network.”
“Looks like a weird houseplant. A houseplant with the storage capacity of one thousand brains. Did we do the math right?” Astro Bob queried.
“We assumed a much more compact anatomy than the brain, using smaller cells and way less overhead in terms of grey matter,” I responded.
“You realize that a large part of our calorie budget goes to feeding the brain. How will this thing get enough energy to think at such a high level?” Trudy objected.
“Our big mammalian brains evolved under the constraint of life on land. Not only do our brains have a body to lug around and keep out of danger constantly, but we’re warm blooded. A sea brain evolved from microbial cells could be far more efficient. Doesn’t miniaturizing electronics improve efficiency? Anyway, there are many sources of energy down here,” I said, gesturing to Kaiakea’s diagram. Imagine a slime layer filled with mutualistic microbes helping digest the constant flow of marine snow falling from the photic zone.”
The Sea Bunny interjected, “Yes! Symbiosis is fundamental to life. You know Lynn Margulis helped Lovelock formulate Gaia? She said that Darwin had it wrong with the whole ‘Nature red in tooth and claw’ thing. Mutualism is at least as important as competition and predation.”
Astrobiology Bob got up and started drawing roots on Sea Bunnie’s space flower. “And why not also extract energy from the sediment, and even the crust? Depending on the location, this mutualistic biofilm could be customized to oxidize sulfide, iron, ammonium, methane, hydrogen, whatever’s available. All these pathways are available in the microbial gamut and should pose no problem, either as symbionts or chromosomal traits. The plant-like structure we’ve drawn here could couple the oxidation of reduced compounds deep in the sediment with oxygen in the water column, giving it the best of both worlds. And during hard times it could even use leftover complex organic ooze in the sediment. There’s about 10,000 times as much organic carbon in the sediment as there is in the entire ocean.”
“So, plenty to snack on during those long nuclear winter nights. Hey, that would be major feedback loop: when the sea chills and the food supply dwindles, utilize more deep sedimentary C, release CO2, take the chill off.”
“If there’s oxygen. When things go south, the deep ocean can get anoxic.”
“No worries. It could switch to anaerobic metabolism. There’s always plenty of sulfate around.”
Astrobiology Bob looked thoughtful for a moment, and said, “This is all very nice, but if we’re stepping outside of the box…”
“Yeah, I think we’re all pretty far out of the box at this point”
“(I left my box at home. Was I supposed to bring a box?)”
“…why not consider the unique energy gradients that only this imagined creature might possess. For example, a network that spans the ocean floor would have access to pressure differentials, currents, and salinity gradients.” He scribbled an elaborate diagram. “A system of hydrostatic tentacles could extract energy from the transient pressure differentials created by currents across the oceanic basin. Many cells are known to use sodium gradients across a membrane to generate ATP. A sufficiently large network could exploit the salinity gradients across depth and along the seafloor.” He paused, and an insight flashed across his eyes. “It has not escaped my attention that by interacting with salinity and pressure differentials at large distances, this being might have the ability to alter oceanic currents.”
He had just blown my mind.
“Dude, you have just blown my mind. I think we all need to start drinking now.”
We started drinking. It was about time. Definitely past noon. A bottle was located, opened and distributed.
“OK, cheers! That brings us to Biogeoengineering. We’ve discussed how the Abyssal Ganglia, the Great Sea Brain, He Who Is Not To Be Named, might survive a global catastrophe. Could it prevent one? Or at least, jumpstart recovery so it doesn’t have to eat stale sedimentary sandwiches for 10 million years?”
“Yeah, if it could get a nice plankton salad going after just a few thousand years of darkness, it would be stoked.”
“Right now, I would kill for some salmon roe with a dusting of marine snow…”
Either I was hearing echos, or the number of smartasses in the room had somehow doubled.
“Most obvious thing is to control the marine C pump. Too much CO2? Pump up the plankton, get busy with the photosyzzy, suck down the CO2, chill out. Yeah, boooooooyyyyy!”
“What my friend, Bob, is referring to is that ocean productivity exerts a strong control over atmospheric CO2, and therefore, the climate. So how does Our Fair Lady of the Deep turn the productivity knob?”
Kaiakea offers, “Between glacial and interglacial periods there are changes in nutrient inputs from land. Stronger winds bring dust, laden with iron and silica…”
“(Ooh, you just said ‘laden.’ That’s fancy)”
“…These nutrients fertilize the sea, life blooms, CO2 absorbed.”
“But can Beezlebubbles make the wind blow?”
“Bob pointed out that maybe it could alter currents. Could it make a storm?”
“Lovelock loved the DMS story. Algae make dimethylsulfide, helps clouds form. Not quite a storm, but…weather, kind of.”
“Ocean productivity is also controlled by how much fixed nitrogen is exchanged with the atmosphere. If old Tinkering Tentacles can alter rates of N fixation or denitrification, that would change the rate of photosynthesis. In fact, denitrification seems to keep pace with paleoclimate nicely.”
“This is such an interesting language you are all speaking. I’m getting quite a lot by context, but not all, I’m afraid.”
“Sorry, Dennis. Denitrification is when microbes turn useable nitrogen from the ocean back into gas, and it goes away. N fixation is the opposite. All this controls how much green stuff in the water can grow. They help control the climate by taking up CO2.”
“OK, so how does the Massive Marine Manipulator influence these things?”
“Mess with genes. Attack some things with viruses, stimulate the growth of other things?”
Kaiakea spoke, “That sounds a little like micromanagement to me. Would a being the size of the ocean and the age of the Phanerozoic work on such a small scale? I expect viruses are essentially impossible to control, and occur on the time scale of minutes. And once you try to mess with the details of chaotic dynamic systems, you’re bound to cause unpredictable effects. Above all, He…It is patient.”
I distinctly heard a capital H there. Interesting.
She continued, “I imagine that the limiting factor to recovery after a mass extinction is the radiation of species into vacant niches. Would It use Its bioengineering skills to increase diversity?”
I was tipsy, but this idea struck me as profound and poetic, yet troubling. A patient sea deity, gradually putting the pieces back together after an epochal calamity. Helping to nudge the few surviving species of each major life form, crustaceans, fishes, cephalopods, into niches left by their unfortunate cousins. Still, this idea made me uncomfortable. I am pretty much Darwinian in my thinking, and don’t think evolution needs a benevolent nudge. All evolution needs is time. And diversity. But what’s the harm in increasing diversity? As humans, we’re doing the exact opposite, except in the case of certain crops. But maybe I’m being too dualistic – life begets life, and biodiversity enriches and stabilizes ecosystems. If a species happens to enrich and stimulate its ecosystem more than others, who am I to complain? Oh shit, I’m spacing out and everyone around me is still speaking animatedly. I try to rejoin the conversation.
“I agree with what you said about micromanagement. Any intervention would have to be subtle, and almost indistinguishable from a properly functioning Earth System on time scales that we recognize. The question is, how can we differentiate conscious intervention by a biogeoengineering-capable lifeform from the emergent properties of a complex global ecosystem?”
A brief silence. Finally, Trudy speaks, “Well, we’ve already started the experiment. We’ve fucked up the climate. Now all we need to do is wait and see if a benevolent being will save us from our own stupidity.”
I suddenly felt a little more sober. “Yes, we should have our answer in about ten thousand years. After the fossil CO2 is fully dissolved into the ocean and a new equilibrium is reached. Maybe faster, if we get some assistance…
“OK, moving on. Let’s talk modes of communication. I assume local connections between cells are electrochemical, like brain synapses, especially since we have evidence of something like myelin that could insulate and speed up these signals. Also, we know that bacteria can communicate with electronic signals [17]. What about longer-distance connections, say between different hubs, clusters, individuals, whatever? Are direct neural connections the most efficient?”
“How fast do nerve signals travel?” asked Kaiakea.
“The world record holder is the Kuruma shrimp, about 210 meters per second. Ours move at about 100 m/s.”
“Well, in the ocean sound travels close to 1500 m/s. and in the SOFAR channel, signals can travel thousands of kilometers.”
“SOFAR, so good.”
“That’s the Sound Fixing and Ranging channel. It’s the depth range where the speed of sound is slowest, and so sound waves get focused into a channel that can carry across entire ocean basins. It’s also known as the Deep Sound Channel, but I prefer SOFAR because the depth varies. In colder seas the channel gets close to the surface.”
“OK, so sound wins in terms of speed and distance. How much information can it carry?”
Astro Bob starts to slowly mutter in the background, “It takes a very long time to say anything in Old Entish…”
“Well, in theory the information content of sound could be infinite, though in practice it’s limited by the frequency range (low frequencies travel the farthest in the ocean), by the organism’s ability to distinguish different frequencies and amplitudes…”
“…and we never say anything unless it is worth taking…” Astro Bob slowly continued.
“…and by the noisiness of the channel through which it’s received,” Kaiakea concluded.
“…a long time to say,” Dennis finished the Tolkien quote for Astro Bob. “And, of course, it depends on the efficiency of their language. Natural languages do not seem to be designed for maximum communicative efficiency, but rather computational efficiency. In other words, we tend to speak from what arises out of our organic mental processes, rather than according to a logical system one might invent for the purpose of clear communication. Language may have started out as a purely internal computational mechanism, and only secondarily became useful for social communication.”
“Ha haaa! Chomsky! Narf!”
“Yes, Pinky. Bob’s speech patterns illustrate this point well,” I chimed in nasally, in my impression of The Brain (which was, in turn, a voice actor’s impression of Orson Wells. How many nested quotation marks are implied in this phrase?). “But what kind of information needs to be transferred long distances? There’s a theory that the conscious mind is an executive system for integrating diverse inputs from many sources (senses, memories, internal processes) and sharing information with the entire brain by sending top-down signals all the way back down the network [18]. If the Abyssal Ganglia is a single integrated conscious being, it would need to receive and transmit complicated signals up and down a network. The problem with sound is that it travels in all directions, it can’t target a specific neural pathway.”
“But isn’t that how the internet works? Messages get sent everywhere, but not everyone has to listen. Messages get picked up, relayed and eventually routed to the target.”
“I guess it could work, but the ocean seems like such a public space to be constantly screaming every conscious thought.”
“So, you’re not a Twitter fan, then?”
“No, I am not. Though I am prone to the occasional Mad Science Monoblog.”
Kaiakea looked thoughtful, and said, “Not every signal would need to be broadcast across the entire ocean. There could be local signals that are relayed along a network. There are many narrow bandwidths available for basically secure communication, without interference from whales or other species.” She paused. “At least until recently.”
“OK, I like it,” I proclaimed. “what kind of structures are needed to produce and receive sounds of these frequencies?”
“Moving air between sinuses produces sounds. That’s how whales do it.”
Astrobiology Bob piped in excitedly and started scribbling on the whiteboard, “Specialized chambers where biogases accumulate, building up pressurized pockets of gas. CO2 would be a convenient choice, except it is highly soluble and compressible. Hydrogen or methane would be more efficient. The pressure is released into an adjacent chamber, modulating the aperture size, elasticity, density, overall geometry of the organ determines the frequency. Vocalization tentacles!” He emphatically labelled his drawing.
“Oooh, it could be like a multitentacled pipe organ! Excellent.”
“And,” said Astro Bob thoughtfully, “It has not escaped my attention…,” eliciting small groans in his audience, “that such Vocalization Tentacles could provide an explanation for the Bermuda Triangle incidents, in which a sudden release of methane leads to a loss of buoyancy, sinking ships.”
“Yeah, buoy! Given your short attention span, how do these deep things keep not escaping your attention? Except you realize that the Bermuda Triangle story has been thoroughly debunked, though the buoyancy thing is true enough – release of methane could probably sink ships. Anyway, back to communication. What about ears?”
“Whales use parts of their skull and jaw bone to receive sound. Also, fat-filled cavities,” offered the Sea Bunny.
“Fat-filled cavities. Our squishy sister of the seafloor can do that.” Astro Bob scribbled some more. “Auditory tentacles! For fun, I’m giving it a highly enervated tympanic membrane on one end, sensitive to small pressure changes. An ear drum sans incus, malleus or stapes.”
“Bone-free, our inveterate invertebrate, leaving no ossicles for fossils.”
Dennis hit us with some etymology, “Speaking of invertebrates, our sound organ, the cochlea derives from the Latin word for snail shell. They say you can hear the ocean in a sea shell…”
“But through the sea shell, the ocean can hear as well as be heard,” I said ominously.
“Can we focus?” Trudy asked politely. “There’s one last point you haven’t covered. What about communication via light?”
“Yes,” replied the Sea Bunny. “About 90% of animal species in the abyssal zone are bioluminescent. The background is completely dark, so as long as there’s low turbidity, light is a highly effective medium. Squids have thousands of chromatophores they use to communicate. Some can even carry on multiple conversations at once.”
It was Dennis’ turn to wax poetic, “By his neesings a light doth shine, and his eyes are like the eyelids of the morning.”
Expectant eyes fell on Dennis.
“Leviathan. Apparently, the immeasurable sea beast of the old testament was bioluminescent.”
“Neesings?”
“Archaic word for sneezes. Presumably a blowhole.”
“Bioluminescent snot.”
“Not just snot. The whole hide, apparently. The story goes that at the end of time the Leviathan will be killed, harvested and:
From the hide of the leviathan God will make tents for the pious of the first rank, girdles for those of the second, chains for those of the third, and necklaces for those of the fourth. The remainder of the hide will be spread on the walls of Jerusalem; and the whole world will be illuminated by its brightness.”
“Huh. I’m not sure how I feel about God carving up the Leviathan into lava lamps and trinkets for his followers,” I said.
“Plus, the reward system is hilarious,” said Astro Bob. “If you believe at the silver level, you will receive this lucky glow-chain! If you believe at the gold level, you will receive this stunning bioluminescent bedazzled blouse! Act now! Supplies are limited!”
Kaiakea was disgusted. “Typical. New Gods destroying the Old Ones.”
“It’s even worse than that, I’m afraid,” Dennis continued. “As the story goes, there used to be a couple, but the female was killed because, ‘if they would propagate, the world could not exist because of them.’”
“Another dick move by Old Testament God.”
“Seriously,” I laughed at Astrobiology Bob’s awesome blasphemy, “but you know, there must be a lesson in that story. Note that God left one of the beasts to survive, in steady state, until the end of time. It must have a function, but had to be kept under control.”
The Sea Bunny sighed, “At least it shows that ancient human cultures were aware of this being, even if they were taught to fear it. It stands to reason that an immeasurable mind would have immense psychic ability.”
This raised eyebrows. I monitored Trudy’s facial expression for annoyance and skepticism. In the past, I have derived a perverse pleasure watching her skewer people, but I felt that this was not one of those times. I decided to gently intercede, “Well, just because there are sea gods and goddesses doesn’t mean early humans had any knowledge of our hypothetical being. Of course, cultures invented sea gods – the ocean is a fundamental feature of our world. But are there any myths with specific information that really fit the description?”
“Leviathan is a good example. Enormous, bioluminescent, eternal and asexual. A fully connected network with the ability to alter DNA at will has no need of sex, and no need to grow, except to replace biomass lost at subduction zones or after natural disasters. Kumugwe commands sea creatures and can see the future, just as Gaia might anticipate and rectify changes in the climate system, and spur biodiversity after disasters. Kanaroa, Tangaroa, Cthulhu, all guardians of the deep.”
“Um, Cthulhu was invented less than 100 years ago.”
“Of course! But Lovecraft was a Highly Sensitive Person. Some of his fans find his cosmos to be so vivid and compelling that they assume he was channeling some kind of authentic reality.”
“Yes, but those are crazy people…” I said quietly, trailing off. “The ocean is an archetypally deep, dark and scary place. It’s only natural to find sea demons dwelling in the collective unconscious.”
“Yes! The collective unconscious! But how did the gods and demons get there in the first place? Why not some kind of psychic contact with the largest, most significant mind on the planet?”
“How?” demanded Trudy, “by what mechanism?”
She shrugged. “Communication is subtle. Who knows what signals could have reached us from the deep that a sensitive mind might have perceived. Sounds, maybe even the configuration of water molecules could be shaped into a message that could influence someone’s subconscious mind.”
Eye rolling commences. Not the water memory shit. I assumed she was referring to the controversial work of Jacques Benveniste, whose results were published in Nature in 1988 [19], but failed to catch on, as these potentially earth-shattering results could not be replicated by other labs.
Trudy stood up, looked at all of us and the fanciful diagrams that populated the whiteboards. “You guys are so full of shit,” she announced, and walked out of the room.
I excused myself and followed her out.
“Trudy, please don’t go! We need your firm connection to reality. Also, if you leave it will be a total sausage fest.”
“You’ll still have your Sea Bunny. Why is she wearing a bathing suit?”
“We’re going to beach after this. You’re invited. Please stay!”
She sighed. “I was just going to the restroom. Calm down.”
After a few minutes, Trudy returned and sat back down. “My apologies, Kaiakea. Please continue. You were talking about water memory and consciousness.”
I started to object, but Trudy cut me off. “Come now, Lipschitz, let’s indulge the lass’s Gedanken experiment. We’re playing what if?”
I was relieved to see we were getting jovial-yet-sarcastic Trudy, as opposed to skeptical science bitch Trudy, though I was still a big fan of the latter.
“Well, the water memory idea has been around, and ridiculed, for years. I’m afraid Masaru Emoto didn’t help gain any credibility with his whimsical experimental attempts at freezing gratitude into beautiful ice crystal patterns, but the field has made a little comeback. Luc Montagnier, won the Nobel prize for helping discover HIV, in his eighties, has been publishing articles in which he purports to show effects of bacterial and viral DNA on the configuration of water molecules [20]. He claims these effects are caused by weak electromagnetic waves from DNA, and that the effects persist in water after dilution, basically to homeopathic levels.”
Astro Bob was googling it. “Here’s one of his papers, Electromagnetic signals are produced by aqueous nanostructures derived from bacterial DNA sequences. The journal is called, Interdisciplinary Sciences: Computational Life Sciences. Never heard of it. Sounds interesting, though:
A novel property of DNA is described: the capacity of some bacterial DNA sequences to induce electromagnetic waves at high aqueous dilutions. It appears to be a resonance phenomenon triggered by the ambient electromagnetic background of very low frequency waves.”
I hurt my mind to imagine how carefully you’d really have to control an experiment like that, diluting solutions to infinity, trying to detect a subtle effect using an instrument you probably recently repurposed that no one fully understands. “OK, everyone, my brain is full. I propose we go to the beach and let our consciousness mingle with the water a little bit.”
Beautiful balmy evening, sun setting. We lit a fire, and proceeded to get lit ourselves. Eventually, things felt very loose, and Kaiakea pulled out her saxophone. Who knew? She warmed up with a few scales and jazz riffs, and then got our attention.
“OK, this is a piece for solo saxophone I composed based on my research of marine acoustics. I call this one MARU #7, after the Marine Autonomous Recording Units used to collect the data. You’ll hear my evocation of Right Whale calls, along with some other noises of the deep.”
She started with a series of low, eerie moans, bending a low sustained note by changing her embouchure, while letting in higher harmonics by opening different valves. Haunting and mournful. She then jumped up to a higher register and let out a series of howling glissandos. Intermittently she rattled the keys and slapped the saxophone body, producing resonant clicks and pings. After introducing these themes, she started to combine and vary them, along with various growls, shrieks and wails. Gliding, plaintive sirens, punctuated with percussive blasts and clicks. She dropped to a soft pianissimo for several seconds, begging us to listen more intently. Then she unleashed a jarring choppy blast, starting low, slowly climbing in pitch and volume, until finally it descended again in pitch and volume, finally fading away like a ship on the horizon. The groans, clicks and wails returned, but this time more agitatedly, a chattering of confusion. She reached a climactic tumult, and paused. Several seconds of silence, and one last final mournful moan.
We applauded enthusiastically and genuinely. I asked her, “That part in the middle, was that sound pollution, like a ship?” She nodded with a sad half-smile.
“More!” Screamed Astro Bob.
Her next piece simulated dolphins with torrents of key rattling and piercing whistles. At one point, she took off the mouthpiece and started playing it without the rest of the body, making free-form shrieks and rasps. Suddenly, out of nowhere, Dennis Jackson produced some bongos, while Astro Bob jumped up and started dancing and reciting beat poetry. I was swept up by the moment and we all joined in.
The Seed in the Sea, what could it be?
Down in the deeps, secrets it keeps.
Old Cthulhu had a swarm, e-i-e-i-o!
With a tentacle here, tentacle there, neuronal cluster, metacluster, meta-ultra-macrocluster…
Networko-complexo-perceptorama. Tentacle intelligence is bringing the drama, singing the Dharma, I got it goin on like a Ganglion. My dendritic spines are crossing lines, and taking names and keepin Deep time. I’m an Immense Entity, I sparkle luminescently with intense mental energy. My network spans basins contiguously {check the stratigraphy, I’m integrated vertically} and I’m just sittin here most contentedly, watching the currents flow…
Hi, I dwell in the abyzzyms, interact with global systems, multitudinous mutualisms with organisms, I’m watchin shit, and makin decisions. Monitor the current conditions. Moderate extreme transitions. My hobby is to breed strange fishes, correct the climate from internal glitches. But guess what, I could kick yo ass, bitches! Don’t mess with me, don’t mess with the sea, leave the thousand thousand slimy things be, or I’ll creep into your sleep, and beam into your dreams, and summon you to depths, Unseen.
I am the gardener of Gaia (thump thumpy thump)
I host a variety of sea life (bip boomp, bump bumpy bump).
Some of them resemble little aliens (bump bumpy bump)
Giant mutant microbe mind with tentacles! (boomp, boompy boomp)
Soon, we were all dancing around the fire, chanting, doing the swim, the narwal, and a spontaneous primal dance that could reasonably be called The Tentacles. Eventually we lay down on the beach, exhausted, with the sounds of the waves gently caressing our ears, and slept.
