GEOLOGY AND MUSIC: EVERY ROADCUT TELLS A STORY

Why are so many geologists musicians? When I took a guitar to field camp I found that geology and music go very well together, although my compatriots may not have shared this opinion as I learned how to play in the evening after each day’s mapping. Now, a number of bands and albums later, I still find art and science to be cross-pollinating. Along the way I recorded a couple of songs that directly deal with the earth sciences—putting music to Ray Troll’s lyrics for Every Roadcut Tells a Story, writing Big Dirt’s Spill Baby Spill about the disastrous Gulf of Mexico oil leak, Pebble Mine about the threat to Alaska’s Bristol Bay salmon fishery, and Start All Over about the rise and fall of civilizations. Many geologists are musicians and in my opinion musical expression exercises the creativity that is an ally of discovery. In general, I think that music helps fuel creativity that can spill over into scientific pursuits. In particular, the ability to shift perspectives and reframe stories that writing and learning songs fosters is valuable for anyone engaged in assessing complex interrelationships or multiple hypotheses. In addition, over the decades that I’ve played in bands that have had no commercial success I have found that music provided balance to my life and practice thinking outside of the box. For this presentation I’ll dust off a couple of songs from the archive, or play a couple of new ones from Big Dirt’s forthcoming album we are currently working on recording. Will the new songs be done in time for the GSA meeting? In some ways music and geology are really not all that different.