_ _ _ The avalanche passed, we returned to our seats by the riverside, now garnished with garlands of glacial fallout. Messy for the moment, but it would learn light soon enough. Chatting away with Long Ears, sitting in harmony together playing card games with the cosmos and watching the ice melt, I remained at rest for the duration of the 19th century. In 1907 I left Lao Tzu and made for Figueras, Spain. The worst was over, and the beautiful lay before me, there but for the flicking of a penny. From here on out I would offer only the sublime. And the sublime begins and ends in surrealism like a lordly king, or worldly knight of the noblest order. Sir Realism. Sir Realism married Miss Anthrophy and made Salvador Dali. And the church bells chimed in the Pantheon as they melted into polished marble. _ _ _ Spain's blood falls mainly on her plains. The rain falls not long thereafter, and washes the sanguine remnants unto sandy, clay soil. Spain's blood flows like lava from the core, robust and vital, conquering all in its path, yet cooling slowly over time, losing its grip and allowing for reclaimation. Spain's blood fidgets with febrile madness, fibrillating between the fevers of Islam and the deadly fantasies of Christianity. Spain slits her own throat, faints at the sight her blood egressing to the soil. Spain has conquered and been the object of conquest. Spain fluctuates between conquistador and conscientious objector, floats guiltily between inquisitor and indigent. Collectively speaking, this leaves them passionately frustrated, furiously confused, and throughly open to self-exploration, throughly willing to try and get a grip. So goes the smiting of Time in the bloods-soaked Spanish madlands of perpetual reigns and rouge-colored clay. Indeed, Spain has a history. A land of transition, a land bridge nexsus between the mystical and methodic, Spain finds herself chasing windmills in the desert, just like Don Quixote, ever in search of the Impossible Dream. The Impossible Dream, just off to the left of that final windmill. Rosinante stirs, her well-worn hooves stomping at the soil, nervous with what she hears in the distance. If you listen, you hear approaching the Temptations of St. Anthony. Mavericks swaggering on matchstick stilts, elephants stomping the terra with legs like giant redwoods, dancing girls all sash and asway, singing with the beauty of the Sirens of Titan, trumpeters and trubadors, mariachi and balalaika players strumming like madmen atop the humps of camels, a mile-high giraffe carries the Sultan and his shaman in a carriage on it's half-mile-high spine. Don Quixote looks over to St. Anthony, kneels alongside him raising his lance, fearless, ready for battle. And then the windmill stirs up the dust and blows the caravan away to the shores of the Mediterranean. Dali lifts the lip of the sea and sweeps them underneath. That's my boy. That's Salvador Dali. I found the young surrealist sitting in his bedroom windowsill watching the rain, aged perfectly Pi. When I materialized he looked at me with dark eyes, swollen and round like black Spanish pearls, awaiting wisdom with intense expectancy. Like the others, on some level he'd known I'd show up sooner or later. And sure enough, I did. Locked in the moment, we gazed at one another fondly, parent to child, kind to kindred. Taking a penny from the pouch, I beheld him there in the deep sill between worlds serene, sublime and surreal. I flicked the copper coin across the room and he caught it in palm of his small, tanned hand. As usual, his world exploded. No words passed between us, nothing verbatim, but visions. Oh, the visions! Apotheoesque imagry arcing between two poles procreating a swirling cornicopia of watchsprings and conquistadors plumed and prancing amid, molecules, mosquitos and martyrs, desolate deserts shimmering, shifting between bone-tinged sands and saltwater, the oceans receeding, revealing spinning balerinas dancing in a dinosaur's ribcage at the gates of Atlantis, beyond which prophets, saints and indigo serpents mingle with unbridled bliss while throngs of forest nymphs sings praises to Shiva, Krishna, Buddha, Christ and clan of Egyptian Dogmen wandering the edge of the abyss -- the abyss glistening with the radiant hues of history, the luminating lights of the immortal, emitting waves of red rose ribbons resonant with the ringing of the spheres, telling eternity's tale as sound becomes light, becomes wisdom in the guise of a grecian harlequin quivering with apopleptic epiphany on eternity's front stoop in anticipation of the receiving rebirth in the apocalypse, audible just beyond the peaks of crimson capped mountains clammoring clandestine and divine as a blushing sunrise piques the pinnacle and awakens the fire-blue pheonix, rising from reverie to shed thin-skinned reality -- set soaring to reveal and release the paper mache' iron shackles binding mortals to the mundane and ushering them on towards ascension -- the wings of the pheonix shattering the flaccid ozone layer, peeling back ionospehre flesh and exposing the open wound of Humanity to the cathectic cartorization of the cosmos, drawing ever nearer to the perfectly whole moment aeternitas. It was a beautiful vision. It was our beautiful vision, like a secret between best friends. We decided to stick with this story, Dali and I, though n'er a worldly word, n'er a breath of air passed between our lips, nothing semantic, nothing telepathic; yet we painted many pictures there that day, he and I, paintings tinted with hues of noble gases and cosmic debris lain out on black hole canvases, idylls rendered in their form most pure, opaque windows thrown wide open and exposed to the elements, exposure giving way to experience, experience revealing the ultimate reality to the young Dali there on that stormy spanish day, there on the fringe of the highlands, the rains all-the-while washing carmine blood from the pock-marked plains of inland Spain. As the rain subsided and sunbeams began breaking through the nimbus cloud cover, I left him there wet and febrile and feverish, with the windows thrown wide open. He would recover, of course, but he would never be the same. I dematerialized and headed for the Americas. My work here in Eurasia completed for the time, I came upon the end of my Classical period. It was time to have a little fun, time to not take my work so seriously, time to move from time to space, time to get medieval. Time to move from Tempus to Aevum. Aevum is Mankind coming into it's own. Aevum is the spirit finally out of the crib and toddling about the chambers. Aevum is the bass head to the Tempus backbeat. Aevum is the antithesis complimenting thesis, leading to synthesis. Aevum is the funky break that makes the hair stand up on the back of your neck. Aevum is where things get weird. All the world's a stage and it's denizens the actors and actresses. Aevum is the director. Aeternitas is the producer, of course, but we'll go there later. For now we've got Aevum. Aevum is a time when Mankind stops grovelling to God and starts working towards becoming God. Indeed, moving from Tempus, through Aevum to Aeternitas. Aevum is the transition. Aevum swings like azsure jazz rising up from a substreet pub. Aevum rocks the world to rolling. Aevum wonts for good times, all the time; yet, like a toddler, Aevum gets disillusioned and delusional when things don't go its way. Despite this tantric tantrum, however, Aevum invariably creates the second part of my story. _ _ _
In the shadowed corridors of creativity, where the hum of machines meets the whisper of ink, Kevin M. Cowan crafts his enigmatic symphony. His words, like ghostly echoes, dance across the page with a haunting grace, weaving tales that linger in the dim corners of the mind. As a musician, he conjures melodies that resonate with the soul's deepest yearnings, each note a spectral thread in the tapestry of sound. A technologist at heart, he navigates the digital labyrinth with a sorcerer's touch, bending the light of innovation to illuminate the unseen. In this twilight realm where art and code entwine, Cowan's work stands as a testament to the beauty found in the convergence of worlds, a noir sonnet
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.
Neo, Archive Guide
