Saturday, April 2, 2011

a glorious dawn - playlist for april


A still more glorious dawn awaits

Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise

A morning filled with 400 billion suns

The rising of the milky way

April's playlist is one song, simply because for the last month I've just been listening to this one song on repeat. It's been all consuming.

I found Glorious Dawn on youtube whilst searching for Carl Sagan clips, and immediately fell in love. It's an autotuned song (stick with me.. it's actually good!) using Carl Sagan's voice (with a cameo by Stephen Hawking!) and it's just beautiful. He had such a deliberate, quiet way of speaking, and the words he spoke were often beyond poetic, so his voice is an ideal one to set to music.

One of my favorite things about Carl Sagan was the childlike wonder he retained throughout his entire life. In a documentary I watched recently, "God, the Universe and Everything Else," Sagan laments the way we treat children who ask questions. If a child asks "why is the sky blue?" we're inclined to answer, "just because." or "what color did you expect it to be? yellow?!" when instead we should be explaining to them what we do know, admitting what we don't, and encouraging them to pursue answers to the unknown when they get older. He wanted children to experience the same thrill that he felt exploring the uncharted waters of the world. This enthusiasm that he had for historical, new and future discoveries is what makes Glorious Dawn so beautiful. You can hear that childlike wonderment in his voice, and whether you're listening in broad daylight or in the middle of the night, you'll find yourself staring out your window, gazing at the sky and wondering...



ps. you can buy a 7" vinyl of the song from Third Man Records!