Prog Digest – An Xperience Column

Prog Digest – An Xperience Column – by Klyde Kadiddlehumper.

Well, howdy kids!  It’s story time with your ‘ol Uncle Klyde.  I’d have invited you to my summer camp – but that damned Ernie ruined it for the rest of us.

This is a story older than most.  Indeed – it really begins in the 6th century BC.  We will start by going back to the future to a couple of months’ ago.

Lest you think Klyde isn’t living in the real world, his alter ego has a real job, a real wife, a real house and is, mostly, a respected member of society.  Thus, here we are.

Yer gonna have to trust me on this one – the road is one that winds in interesting directions.

From time to time, the writer of these muses is invited to very interesting things.  In this case, a business workshop held at the S&P Global Headquarters on Water Street in NYC this past June.

Among the attendees are captains of industry in the energy, sustainability, manufacturing and many other fields.  Thought leaders. Not what you might expect of this cat, but this is to set the scene for how we get here.

As part of a follow-up series of emails, my alter ego made a few interesting comments. The gist of the comment was the seemingly binary thought that one cannot have good without evil – and, who is to say which is the more comely.

Now we come to the meat of our little tale.  One of the other attendees thought the comment interesting (just happens to be a retired Army Lt. Colonel) and wondered if I was using the pre-Socratic philosopher Heraclitus’ “Panta Rhea”.  Fundamentally the idea that the world is constantly in flux.  We, and everything around us, is in a constant state of fluidity.  Never being – always becoming.

I was not.  Or, to be more accurate, I had no idea that said alter ego was using his thoughts.  As Klyde will tell you, he writes whatever pops into his pill crazed little head.  Taking more from the late, great, Hunter S. Thompson than Danielle Steele.  More Fear and Loathing, please.

Among the many ways he was described, Heraclitus was called a Sybil – where the same words can have multiple meanings. When asked his opinion of the writings of Heraclitus, Socrates, by account, replied “The part I understand is excellent, and so too is, I dare say, the part I do not understand; but it needs a Delian diver to get to the bottom of it.”  Delving into the depths of such thought requires, perhaps, a certain fearlessness.

Other authors I would put in this category would be Gore Vidal, William Faulkner and Don Imus (with an assist from his sidekick Chuck McCord).  Thoughtful, witty, confounding and full of fire that burns so hot it hurts your eyes.

It’s what the continuing arc of these columns embodies. Progress – never ending.  Never settling.  Never becoming the stone gathering moss.

Yes, music is, at the heart of things, what Klyde likes to write about. Diddja catch Klyde’s review of Donny Osmond?  If not, check it out online at RadioRadioX.com.  If you don’t think Donny Osmond is progressive – you would be wrong.  Much like Klyde, his career has had ups, downs, sideways, crossways, near death and remarkable resurrection. Music is always progressive – except, perhaps for Yanni – I am STILL waiting for him to resolve one damned chord.

Darwin was right – evolve, adapt or die.  Why do sharks continually move?  They stop, they die.

Don’t like your favorite artist’s latest because it isn’t just like the last one?  Perhaps they have not yet become but are still becoming.  Taylor Swift was basically thrown out of the country music club for changing.  And look what we got.

So, get over whomever you think you are and let change happen.

This is Prog Digest.  Where all we really know is that Father Time is undefeated. And 2500 years later, a little known, to most of us, Heraclitus epitomizes ‘progressive music’ and the progress music can make.

Now, who put that monolith over there and why are these monkeys making so much noise?

Until next time.

Klyde

More from Klyde Kadiddlehumper…