Across the Gaian Cosmos

On July 19 of this year (2025), Tyler Volk (author of Gaia's Body) and I did a Gaia-themed concert, "Across the Gaian Cosmos," as a fundraiser for the Kingsley Grist Mill historical district in Clarendon, Vermont. Our venue was the Grist Mill itself, within its all-wooden high-ceilinged central space encircled with old radio sets and Ron Evans' paleolithic stereo system alongside the old millstone itself and other period components salvaged from the Mill's working life before its restoration. With Tyler on lead guitar and myself on rhythm guitar and vocals, we played a set of mostly old rockers with lyrics that resonated with seven choice phases of Gaia's unfolding.

We interspersed musical numbers with short expositions, from the coalescence of the planet from the solar disk (Grateful Dead, "Dark Star"), to the evolution of photosynthesis (Kinks, "Sunny Afternoon") to the symbiogenesis of the eukaryotic cell (Youngbloods, "Everybody Get Together"), and on to the rise of ecosystems (U2, "Wild Honey") and the Gaian hydrosphere as first presented in the paper "Water Gaia" by Stephan Harding and Lynn Margulis. For this phase I began with a bit of my article on the Water Gaia thesis, "The Earth as Aquifer," followed by Van Morrison's "And It Stoned Me": "Oh, the water, oh oh, the water."

Thanks to Tyler for taking this ride with me, to Jimmy Gao for videotaping the event, to Mitchell Thomashow for the loan of his beautiful Taylor acoustic guitar for the evening, and to Ron and Linda Evans at the Kingsley Grist Mill for their cosmic hospitality and abiding faith in the spirit of Woodstock. Please enjoy the "Water Gaia" phase of the concert. Let us know if you'd like to bring our show to your town.