10:13pm
Two texts sent exactly 24 hours apart.
The first iMessage, sent on Tuesday, April the 21st at 10:13 p.m., reads, “Relaxing to play this one.”
It is from my older son, accompanied by a video of him playing an acoustic cover of Meshuggah’s song “Straws Pulled at Random.”
The song has a kind of polymeter where the riff turns against the beat and the rhythm and accents are always shifting while a steady pulse remains.
“It’s almost hypnotic,” he later tells me.
It’s this turning against the beat that I reflect on while listening. Is this life captured in a song — the changing pull of directions, the turning against the tide?
My son is playing this song while entrenched in final engineering exams at university.
He has four that week, but he is relaxing to play this one. Can life be sweet even during finals?
Can a song timed right pull us out of ritual, obligation, and the underlying stresses of life?
Can momentary joy be found even while under pressure, making room for art?
Can we enter that hypnotic state he speaks of while a steady pulse remains?
The second text is sent on Wednesday, April 22nd, at 10:13 p.m. This one is from my younger son.
The iMessage reads, “I took some incredible photos of the moon. Great quality.”
He has gone to Alta Lake late, on a school night.
He has strapped his camera and tripod on his back, riding in the dark on his electric bike.
This is a last-minute diversion.
The sky is clear — he wants to capture the moon’s craters up close on his lens.
The Artemis II: A Crewed Lunar Flyby brings my son to the moon, here and in his dreams.
We speak about Neil Armstrong’s moon landing in 1969 and his words that still echo: “That’s one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind.”
Is my son’s step to find the moon that night something giant or small? What does it mean to feel the sudden impulse to want to see something for oneself?
To be a witness to its beauty, its splendour?
What happens when we break the monotony of life, when we sacrifice sleep for something more wondrous?
Heading down a dark trail, without fear, only inclination, pointing our lens upward, toward something distant, yet so visible to our eyes.