“You’ll know when you get there.”
– Herbie Hancock
The jazz composer and performer Herbie Hancock was discussing a new direction in his music with then NPR program host Billy Taylor in the early 1970s. The context of the discussion was the album Quasar. Taylor asked him to explain what he was trying to do with his electronic, spacey new style. “You’ll know when you get there,” he teased. He would include that line as the title of his subsequent album, Mwandishi, the following year. I hosted a jazz program on my college radio station at the time and was intrigued with this new sound. It matched my fascination with space exploration — both outer space and oceanic space — not yet thinking about inner space.
When I decided to launch this blog, I couldn’t clearly explain what it was about. I wanted to explore my lifelong interest in the Great Lakes, its precarious ecological state and efforts to restore shorelines and wetlands, and otherwise mitigate the damage caused by industrial pollution. But as I thought about it deeper, I’ve found a place of t[he imagination, as the fictional character Fra Mauro (alluding to the historic cartographer, Fra Mauro) articulated in James Cowan’s novel, A Mapmaker’s Dream. In the novel, Fra Mauro is identified as a monk in a Venetian monastery that entertains travelers from distant places. The exotic, sometimes fantastic tales of his guests challenged the mapmaker to chart the world of ideas and personalities. He articulates his dilemma in this passage:
“How goes my world? Outspread and undulating it lies on the table, a great orb of intractable terrain. Zones of pure space extend to the farthest reaches of my imagination. It is a world made up of much more than kingdoms and continents. It is a realm known only to those who have an eye to seeing what is invisible, or to those who are prepared to elevate themselves above the light of understanding.
“Such a map intimates the earth’s supreme aloneness. By the light of a candle, coastlines appear to tremble ever so slightly before my gaze. They pulsate with the movement of endless unseen tides. Every mountain range is glaciered with shimmering ice. Travelers to such regions return with reports that do little justice to the exhilaration they have felt. Remote mountain tracks disappear in their footsteps, leaving them confined to their solitude more completely march ahead in search of a fertile valley, a hospice, a haven. They are forever trudging toward the prospect of knowing more about themselves.”
To that end, I’ll be looking across the water, into the water, and around the water, listening to stories of people who define its space, including my own. I’ll know more when I get there.
