Indeed, in Aevum, they sing nothing but the blues. And with good reason. Aevum is the middle ground between primordial and celestine, between animal and god, between the Alpha and Omega. After inception and before ascension, there is Aevum, which is humankind, riding hindside aboard a barbed-wire roller coaster all the way from the Big Bang to the Promised Land. This provides excellent fodder for singing the blues. It's a bumpy ride, of course, where nothing seems to go quite right. Aevum is the puberty of evolution, clumsy, awkward, gangly, driven insane by the rage of changing hormones, body turned against spirit, dividing humans in two like a splayed breast of chicken. Or beef. That's Aevum for you. Indeed. And if it weren't for music, for the ringing spheres and suprasonic subspace bass, for the colliding comets keeping time in the galaxies and planets whirling within them, if it weren't for human affinity with with the stuff of the cosmos, these invisible bands of information upon which humans draw knowledge and understanding and hope, the ride between the Beginning and the End would be pretty much unbearable. Guaranteed. Walking down a dirt road deep in the deltas of Mississippi, thinking about humanity, I came upon a small speakeasy seemingly in the middle of nowhere. It looked very much like a barn, converted to a bar. All they had to do was remove an 'n'. The place was packed. There was a band playing the blues, of course. It sounded divine. I climbed an apple tree in a small grove near the edge of the clearing and listened. Oh! Certainly, here was a prime example of what it sounded like to suffer like a man. To groan at the iniquities, the injustices of life, to bemoan betrayal, to cry out for heaven, to laugh it off and shuffle on home. Home. Home is in the head, where the heart is. The hearth you call home is simply where you lay your head, where you find you have a happy heart. That's home. That may be either a Mansion or a Mission, either piney forests or boggy swamps, may be either working hard or simply sitting around singing the blues. All roads lead to the Aeternitas, where body, mind and spirit become one. I listened to the band for an hour, or so. They stopped playing. The doors of the speakeasy flew open and a large cloud of stale smoke balloned out from the double-wide doorway. Then the people flowed from between the open doors. They were jubilant, merry, intoxicated. They laughed like hell, arms wrapped about one anothers shoulders, kissing, hugging, howling and whooping. They were misery in company, and loving it. That's the blues for you. The crowd milled about the parking lot and I watched from my perch, making love and negating negotiations, then piled into big, black sedans and pick-up trucks of various shapes and states of disrepair, roared off down the dirt road, leaving only the barkeep and musicians. The Bluesmen. Three men with the keys to the Paradise in the form of an accoustic guitar, stand-up bass and a snare drum, kick bass, hi-hat kit -- the tools of the trade that takes the crowd to heaven. I stayed in the tree until long after the crowd had cleared, and twilight had set upon the barnlike bar. One of the men came outside to a porch alongside the building and lighted a saffron colored cigarette. He inhaled deeply a couple times, holding the smoke in, then coughing as he exhaled. I walked over to him. "Good evening," I said. He looked at me with the eyes of Christ. He was a great musician. "You a cop?" "No, just a friend." "You want a hit?" "I'm fine for now. You feel free." "Don't mind if I do," he said, and drew another long, deep drag. "I was listening to your set. It was magnificent. You play well." "Much obliged," said the man. He had dark skin and the longest fingers I'd ever seen on a human being. They seemed to run on forever. "Name's Waters. Muddy Waters." "My name is Vajra," I said, "but my friends call me Pi." "Pi? Like cherry pie?" "Something like that. My name is derived from the curvature of a circle." "My name's derived from the delta bog." "Strange names for flesh, wouldn't you say?" "I would." "That makes us brothers, of a sort." "I hear you, brother," he said, and gave me a big, soulful grin. I return the gesture. "Brother," I said. We shook hands, the kid jumped, just a little at the intensity of my resonation. It was the least I could do for him. "Where you from there, Pi" "Nepal." "Long ways off, Nepal. How the hell you wind up in the Mississippi Delta?" "Long story. I make a career of traveling." "Man after my own heart." "Brothers." "Where you headed?" "Just kicking around, at the moment. Think I'll head back to Europe soon. There's someone I need to see." "Family thing." "Something like that." He took another puff from the cigarette, held it in. You could see the acceleration in his eyes, feel it emanate from his being. He smiled. "One of the best things on the planet," he said, exhaling. "God knew what he was doing when he created hemp." "In that whole which is God, everything exists in total perfection." "Yeah, but this ain't that whole." "Not as such. It is the whole incohate, differentiated, chaotic. This existence, this planet ultimately will become part of the cohesive whole, the unwaivering band of light comprising the information of the cosmos in its entirety. True, this plane is not the whole, but it's linked inextricably to that whole, as your fingers to your hand, bluesman." "Okay, I'm biting. What's the connection?" "Resonation." "Tell me something I don't know," he said, laughing, his face lighting up in the night. "There's nothing much you can tell to a someone who sings the blues. Celebrating the suffering, laughing at the Sorrow of Humanity, lifting spirits to the sky, these defeat the Heat Death of entropy, the decay of the soul, and propell the spirit from the mind unto omniscience." "You got that right." "As I said, there's not much to tell a bluesman. Except to keep on playing the blues." "It's what I live for, brother Pi." "I hear it in your music. You'll go far, my friend. You'll define the blues for years to come, and you and I will see each other again beyond the confines of the flesh." "You're a strange man, Pi." "I'm an immortal," I said, "just as you are." "I'm just a man," he said, slightly vehement. "No," I said, taking his hands and holding them plams up in my hands, as if revealing his own hands to him for the first time. "No, you're more than a man. You're a bluesman. There's a difference. You're only one step away from the Promised Land friend. Be sure and take that step and cross the threshold. You're flesh, it's going to try and tell you different, you're flesh it will say 'stay with me and forget about omniscience', but you really shouldn't listen. That's an old trap set to snare sheep. It no longer becomes humanity to become entangled in this simple snare of minerals, water and empty space. It is the resonation within that empty space that remains important. That vibration humming throughout the whole of your body, that is the ringing of the spheres and the whispering of molecules, telling the whole story of this particular universe over and over from the Big Bang onward. Mr. Waters, you know all this of which I speak. I tell your molecules nothing new. Yet allow me the privilage of clearing the muddy deltas for the moment. Let me clarify, let me testify, let me justify," I said. I was rolling. "Keep on playing the blues until your flesh rusts or fades away, whichever comes first, and you'll find the Promised Land, guaranteed." "Like I said, it's what I live for. Ain't nothing but the blues" he said "Well, there's something more than the blues," I said, "but it's a good start." He looked at me soulfully, quietly cautious, and I decided to take my leave. "Suppose I should be wandering on down the road, about now. Goodnight, Bluesman." "Goodnight, Immortal Pi, I'm sure we'll meet again." "I don't doubt that for a second," I said, walking away from him around the corner of the barn and becoming immaterial, heading for Europe just a little faster than the speed of light. Teleportation is tricky, but it's still the only way to fly. _ _ _
In the dim glow of twilight, where shadows dance with whispered secrets, Kevin M. Cowan weaves his tapestry of words, notes, and code. His pen, a wand of ink, conjures stories that linger like the scent of rain on asphalt, haunting and profound. As a musician, he crafts melodies that echo through the corridors of forgotten dreams, each note a ghostly sigh that resonates with the soul's deepest yearnings. In the realm of technology, he is an alchemist, transforming lines of code into living, breathing entities that pulse with the heartbeat of the future. Together, these threads form a noir symphony, a digital sonnet, a narrative that is both a mirror and a shadow, reflecting the world in all its
Kevin M. Cowan is a writer, technologist, and artist whose work spans novels, AI development, drumming, and filmmaking. From his fiction roots in Nebraska to experimental media projects and cutting-edge AI, Kevin blends storytelling, sound, and code into one creative continuum. Explore his world — one story, rhythm, and idea at a time.
Music. Video. Visuals arts. All composed or curated by Kevin.
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