Warren picks up mandolin and starts playing these Americana bluegrass tunes over and over again - you know, nananananananana - and its like this manic soundtrack to our mounting insanity… and eventually we explode.
He comes from a really tough part of working class Manchester. He writes songs like “Daddy was a drunk, Daddy was a singer, Daddy was a drunken singer, murdered in a flophouse, broke and drunk…”
There was a time in my research when I was obsessed with this idea. I was fixated on the implications - that you could leave the Earth and travel in a straight line to a distant galaxy on the edge of the observable universe and realize it was the Milky Way that you left behind you and that the planet you landed on was the Earth.
Even our friends are full of doubt. Our good friend, the musician Sean Hayes, is writing lyrics like “Let’s just play this one out until it explodes into a thousand tiny pieces. What’s your story, universe? You are melodies, you are numbers, you are shapes, you are rhythms.”
Warren and I hear this and we’re pretty sure it’s about us.
This week’s podcast: An astrophysicist discovers wild parallels in her research and romantic life.
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