More people should see the Sun the
way it looks in this picture. It really puts our reality into a different
perspective. Here’s a fun thing you can look up. Go on Google and ask it
“What’s the nearest star to the Earth?”
It
gives you Alpha Centauri A, which is 4.3 lightyears from Earth. Is the Sun, a
mere 93 million miles away, a joke to you, Google? Is it because we
subconsciously as humans don’t put the Sun in the same category as the rest of
the stars, even though it is a star? By the way, I love watching videos where someone attaches
a camera to a weather balloon and lets it fly into the upper atmosphere. It
nearly gets to the vacuum of space before popping. When you see the sun up
there, against a black background instead of blue, and you see other stars in
the sky, it makes you confront the fact that the sun is just another star. A
closer one to us, but a star nonetheless. Why do we categorize the Sun differently?
The
ancient Armenians considered themselves the Children of the Sun; as did the
Incas, and the ancient Egyptians, and countless other cultures, separated by
centuries and continents. The vast majority of religions ever followed by
humanity have the Sun as their central deity. It’s true though. We are the
children of the sun. We exist because of the Sun. The atoms and molecules that
make up our bodies come from the Sun, formed in the same gas cloud as the Sun
eons ago. We forget this due to modern materialism, which postulates that the
sun is nothing more than an uninteresting, unremarkable flaming ball of gas. Not
many people really stop to contemplate the Sun or be grateful to it. It’s been
objectified, despiritualized and taken for granted. It simply is. Yet we rely
on it in uncountable ways.
I myself have had a somewhat
troubled relationship with the Sun over the years. I like darkness. The Sun
bothers my eyes, and I dislike heat and get sunburned easily. I prefer night to
day, and winter to summer. But in the last couple years I’ve been grappling
with existentialism, the meaning of life, and contemplating the universe I’ve
found myself in, as well as my own existence. You could call it an existential
crisis, but I view it more as an awakening. I discovered the hypothesis of
panpsychism, which postulates that the stars have their own consciousness and
are in a sense alive, and the epiphany was mind-blowing.
A
star has a life cycle; it is born, it builds itself and grows just like an
embryo, reaches maturity, grows old, and dies. Most scientists rely on the hypothesis
of dark matter to explain why stars defy gravity, expanding the universe when
gravity ought to be making the universe contract, and why stars move faster
around their galaxies than should be physically possible. But there’s no proof
of dark matter’s existence. Who’s to say the stars aren’t moving of their own
volition?
I
see the Sun as my oldest living ancestor. Panpsychism can’t be proved nor disproved and likely never will be, which is why it's likely to be labeled a pseudoscience and not taken seriously by the scientific community. But I feel that I’ve faith in it. Almost a
sort of religion, I suppose, based both in modern science and ancient paganism,
whereas the Gods are more like symbolic personifications of real ideas and
concepts. But really, I view it more as an interpretation of reality, or a
philosophy. And one guess is as good as another when it comes to interpreting
this bizarre reality we’ve been born into. I’m not dogmatic about it, I could
even change my mind entirely down the road. But the ancients always believed the
Sun has a consciousness. Ra, Apollo, Aramazd, all the Sun Gods are different
representations and interpretations of the Sun by different cultures. Why do
children tend to draw a face on the sun? Could it be that we’re all inherently
aware of the sun’s consciousness somewhere in the back of our minds, until modern
society convinces us it’s not true? If the Sun does indeed possess a consciousness, it would be something that we couldn't even comprehend. Perhaps the sun is hyper-aware of all that its rays of light touch. Are we as lifeforms merely extensions of the Sun’s consciousness? Are we not all a part of the Sun, in some way?
In appreciation of the Sun,
I’ve put together a mix CD in honor of this year’s Summer Solstice. It could be considered a sister mix to the one I did about the Moon. Each song
is either about the Sun or mentions it somewhere in the lyrics. The playlist
takes the form of a day; at the beginning is a song about dawn, and near the
end are songs about sunset. Each song was relevant to me at some point in my
life. It crosses genres.
I
tried my best to rebuild the playlist on Spotify for anyone interested. They
had most of the songs, but not all.
Rammstein
– Sonne
“Hier
kommt die Sonne.”
This song is one of the best odes to the Sun I know
of. Although entirely in German. It's about the rising sun, how it is the brightest star in the sky. I always liked the angelic feminine vocals that accompany the song. It brings to mind light.
Pink
Floyd – Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun
As a Pink Floyd song it has a
psychedelic quality to it. It’s the song that makes me think about the actual
Sun as a star in space, and contemplate what a remarkable thing the Sun really
is, as well as the mystery surrounding its purpose in the universe.
“The
moon, the sun, and the astral kiss.”
This song also has a spacey energy to it. I don’t
know what an “astral kiss” is. Perhaps it refers to an eclipse. But it is a
great concept. Very poetic. I couldn’t find it on Spotify, unfortunately, but
three of La Scaltra’s albums are on there.
Holygram
– She’s Like the Sun
“She’s
like the sun, far away.”
If the only thing that the woman in
this song has in common with the Sun is that she’s far away, I don’t think
she’s very much like the sun. Is she 93 million miles away like the Sun?
Anyway, I do like this song a lot.
“At
the first day of life you were blinded by light, don’t believe the Sun.”
A lot of And One songs, especially the English language ones, are just word
salad, it’s hard to find meaning in them. But I think this song is about how
the Sun is a constant throughout your life. It mentions stages in your life
from birth to death. It may even mention reincarnation in the lines “So you die
and you’re dancing in the tunnel of light, don’t believe the Sun. At the first
day of life then it shines so bright and then, you realize you’re born again.”
Kind of goes with my theory that your soul is part of the Sun and returns to
the Sun after death to be recycled into another lifeform.
Another
song missing from Spotify, sadly.
New
Order – True Faith
“I
used to think that the day would never come, that my life would depend on the
morning sun.”
I don’t really know what this song
is about exactly. But it is interesting when someone talks about a “morning
Sun” as if it’s separate from a “noon Sun” or an “evening Sun”, even though
it’s the same star. I suppose the Egyptians had more than one Sun God, Horus
representing the morning Sun and Ra representing the evening Sun. It’s like
when someone says “look at that moon!” as if there’s more than one. It’s funny
to think about how other human beings look at the Sun and Moon.
Stratovarius
– Eagleheart
“Heart
of an eagle he flies through the rainbow into a new world and finds the Sun.”
Here’s another song I don’t know how
to interpret. But, the lyrics are very poetic. I think the singer must have
been making some sort of metaphor. The
mention of rainbows is a good lyric to bring up, as a rainbow wouldn’t exist
without the Sun.
The
Bambir – Արև է Ելել (The Sun is Up)
The
Bambir is an Armenian folk rock group, and this song, translating to The Sun is
Up, is dedicated to the Velvet Revolution of 2018, when the people of Armenia
organized a massive peaceful protest and forced the Prime Minister Serj
Sargsyan, known for his corruption, to resign. The Sun here represents hope and
optimism, the end of a long dark night that began with the fall of the Soviet
Union.
Dishwalla
– Counting Blue Cars
“Must have been, late afternoon. On
our way, the Sun broke free of the clouds.”
This is a song from my childhood in the 1990’s. It’s
very emotional, I get nostalgic and teary-eyed sometimes if I listen to it in
the right mood. The line above is some great use of imagery, I can see the
image in my mind when the singer describes it. And the main chorus says “Tell
me all your thoughts on God, ‘cuz I’d really like to meet Her.” Interesting
pronoun choice, but I have no qualms with it. I’m at the point now where I
think of the Sun and stars as Gods. Those are my thoughts.
“September
sun, blowing golden hair.”
Nice use of imagery in the lyrics,
but I don’t know if the sun really “blows” anything, does it? Anyway, you can’t
go wrong with throwing Type O Negative on the mix. This is one of their
characteristically dark and beautiful songs. September is when the Sun seems to
wane, as the northern hemisphere tilts away from it. The sunlight almost has a
different color tint to it in the autumn.
And this song is missing from
Spotify! How? I think the whole album it’s on is missing. Maybe that will
change eventually. As an aside, making this playlist made me realize whether or not a song can be found on Spotify doesn't necessarily depend on how obscure it is.
Voltaire
– All the Way Down (Cave Canem Demo)
“The sun
goes down, as children listen. All the way down.”
Now we get the songs about the sunset. This song is
a beautiful one, which makes the connection of sunset with death. I listened to
this song when my grandfather Dean passed away, and it tends to make me think
of him, even though I don’t think he would have ever heard this song himself.
It’s kind of my private tribute song to him.
The
Midnight – Sunset
“Sunsets,
no regrets, first chance last dance stuck in the middle.”
This is a song about just packing up
and leaving everything behind with your significant other to start a new life
somewhere else. You don’t usually see sunsets being used as a metaphor for new
beginnings, that’s usually more of a dawn thing, making this song unique in
that regard. It’s a great song.
The
Jetzons – When the Sun Goes Down
Another song about the sunset. I’ve
talked about this obscure early 1980’s New Wave band before, and their
connection with the soundtrack of the video game Sonic the Hedgehog 3. It’s
been theorized that this song served as the basis for the Marble Garden Zone.
The
Kentucky Vampires – The Falling Sun
Everyone’s favorite Kentucky goth
rock band besides Scary Black. I don't have a whole lot to say about it. The songs get darker from here on in, and this song helps the transition. There's a certain science to making playlists that flow well, you see.
Svetlana
Mart – Moon Eclipsed the Sun
I mentioned this song in my top 3 songs of June.
It’s a catchy little number about casting spells during a solar eclipse. I’ve
witnessed one solar eclipse in my life, it was that famous one on August 21,
2017. In Florida it was only partial, but the sky got dimmer, it got less hot
out, and the sunlight in the shadows under trees became crescent-shaped. It
felt like I was wearing sunglasses but I wasn’t. It was pretty surreal. I don’t
know if I’ll ever get to see a total solar eclipse. But I would love to one
day.
VNV
Nation - Further
“The
sun was born, so it shall die, so only shadows comfort me.”
This is a great song about
existential nihilism. Earlier in the song it asks “When the sun burns out, will
any of this matter?” These are questions I’ve been tackling recently. One day
the Sun will expand into a red giant, likely swallowing the Earth in the
process, but not before all of Earth’s oceans boil away. Who will be around to
talk about humanity then?
SYZYGYX
– The Dying Sun
This song is nearly an instrumental if not for some
vocalizations by the singer here and there. The dark imagery that the
instrumental brings to mind is of the Sun as a red giant in billions of years,
scorching the solar system and engulfing the inner planets. Will life exist in
the solar system at this point? Perhaps its doubtful; I don’t really hold much
hope for the human race to last more than a few hundred more years myself, but
perhaps I’m being too pessimistic. I also like to think that life takes on more
forms than scientists currently think. Perhaps every planet has its own type of
life. But, I don’t base that on any actual evidence. It’s just a thought.
This short instrumental which I wrap
the playlist up with samples the female vocals from Rammstein’s "Sonne", giving
the playlist a good bookend. Like the cycle of day and night, it ends where it
begins.
