IT’S THREE IN THE MORNING AND WE ARE ROLLING THROUGH THE FORESTS OF VIRGINIA ON OUR WAY TO NORFOLK. I HAVE TURNED OUT THE LIGHTS IN MY LITTLE BEDROOM IN THE REAR OF THE BUS AND LIE BACK WATCHING THE BRIGHT stars as we zoom along the highway.
Last night a professional astronomer told me he calculated that I must have been in the latitude of Bombay or Calcutta when I wrote “The Galaxy Song,” as that is the point on the planet where the rotational speed of the earth is nine hundred miles an hour. He points out that the speed of your rotation alters with how far north and south you are. At the equator your rotational speed is fastest, at the North Pole it is zero. I thought I had given the optimum rotational speed at the equator, but not apparently so. I have had to revise my “Galaxy Song” lyrics several times since I wrote it more than twenty years ago, because, even in that brief time, our estimation of the size of our galaxy has changed considerably. It is amazing how quickly our speed of knowledge is increasing, and very important, too, since our speed of efficiency at self-destruction has also increased.
Just remember that you’re standing on a planet that’s evolving
And revolving at 900 miles an hour.
That’s orbiting at 19 miles a second, so it’s reckoned,
The sun that is the source of all our power,
The sun, and you and me, and all the stars that we can see,
Are moving at a million miles a day,
In an outer spiral arm, at 40,000 miles an hour,
Of the galaxy we call the Milky Way.
Our galaxy itself contains five hundred billion stars;
It’s a hundred thousand light-years side to side;
It bulges in the middle six thousand light-years thick,
But out by us it’s just a thousand light-years wide.
We’re thirty thousand light-years from Galactic Central Point,
We go ’round every two hundred million years;
And our galaxy is only one of millions of billions
In this amazing and expanding universe.
Our universe itself keeps on expanding and expanding,
In all of the directions it can whiz;
As fast as it can go, at the speed of light, you know,
Twelve million miles a minute and that’s the fastest speed there is.
So remember, when you’re feeling very small and insecure,
How amazingly unlikely is your birth;
And pray that there’s intelligent life somewhere out in space,
’Cause there’s bugger all down here on Earth!
Backstage I was visited briefly by Ann, a British folk singer from Renaissance who reminded me of the first time we met at Warner Brothers Records in Soho in the late seventies. I had popped in with Carrie Fisher for a social visit to see my pal Jonathan Clyde when in came Chrissie Hynde and the Pretenders, totally elated that their song “Brass in Pocket” had just gone to number one. They insisted we join them in an instant celebration. Champagne corks began to pop, and there was some very odd behavior as the party grew riotous. I remember Chrissie fiddling provocatively with the front of guitarist James Honeyman-Scott’s pants, which seemed to inspire Carrie into a kind of testosterone challenge, and soon both American girls were in each other’s faces seeing how wildly they could dance at each other. It was odd and strange and kind of wonderful: two of the ballsiest American women engaged in a wild contest from which neither would back down. The party drifted on to my house in St. John’s Wood as parties in those days tended to, and we drank on and danced to my jukebox. At some point the news came through that Paul McCartney had been arrested and thrown in jail in Japan on charges of possessing marijuana, and Ann reminded me that I instantly got on the phone to the Japanese embassy to protest this. I demanded that unless he was released at once we would all boycott Japanese restaurants. That should have scared them.
It’s 5:00 A.M. and I’m riding shotgun with ’Lish as we head east toward the dawn. It comes up green with red streaks and dark black clouds. The navy blue of the waters of Chesapeake Bay glow weirdly as we roll along a wide causeway. The deck lights of fishing boats flash past on either side. Venus is high in the sky and Mercury prominent as we cross, appropriately, Mercury Boulevard. There are many British place names all improbably jumbled: Portsmouth, Norfolk, Suffolk, Newmarket, Aberdeen. I see that Powhatan, Pocahontas’s dad, has now become a major highway. This is where the real first colonists came four hundred years ago. Can we imagine what it will be like after four hundred years? Now tangles of cranes are silhouetted against the sky, and we pass the shattered remains of an amphitheater, its roof shredded like tattered sails, torn apart by the last storm. Gray navy ships are everywhere as we slip by the Elizabeth River, its flat, calm water reflecting the lights from a large hotel. A scurry of ducks are taking to the water as the light becomes first muddy yellow and then brilliant gold bars in a Krishna blue background. At six thirty in the morning I climb off the bus and check into the hotel with the ever vigilant Skip. No one else is up. I’m expecting a junior suite, small and compact. The joke is on me. I’m in the presidential suite. It’s massive. The bedroom has a four-poster bed and an escritoire and a sofa. The vast stateroom contains a dining table for twelve and a real fireplace, complete with a three-piece suite and an enormous panoramic bay window where, as I enter, with perfect timing, our nuclear neighbor the sun rises straight ahead, bright fiery red. It’s a breathtaking view of the bay as beneath me an early catamaran slips out toward the sea. Sun up and the birds are heading south for the shoreline; it’s definitely time to go to bed.