     Vapor Virtuoso


From early childhood his right-brain half had always loved music.  
He could sit for hours,
Mesmerized by his parents' old Sixties rock records, 
Playing along on air guitar.  

Even after he learned to play other guitars
Made of wood or plastic or whatever
He kept the one made of air.  

He would play along with some record, 
But he wouldn't stop when it ended.  
As his mind wandered and his fingers followed 
 along the strings of his imagination
A new song would likely as not be born.  

His left brain, on the other hand, 
Loved science, especially chemistry,
And knew that music was unlikely to ever pay his bills.  

Fate's winding road led him onto the faculty at the university:  
Enjoyable, financially sort of OK, and safe 
From the big corporations
His right brain hated.  
And he had friends in the music department.  

One night at a party, 
As he was answering some question about the atmosphere, 
Someone asked him if an air guitar could be split up 
Into a nitrogen guitar, 
An oxygen guitar, 
And so on for the rest of the list.  
And if it could, what would the individual gas guitars sound like?  

Amid laughter, his left brain brushed the question aside.
But his right brain wouldn't let him forget it.   

He started to experiment.  

One of the labs he had access to had chambers
That could be filled with this gas or that vapor
While you reached in with special gloves 
To work on whatever was inside.  

In the quiet of the night, 
With no one around to disturb him, 
He would play along with his portable music player 
And when the music stopped, 
Let his mind wander where the molecules under his fingers
Would lead him.  

Nitrogen didn't seem to do much.  
He got a song or two about plant food 
And how to make nitroglycerin:  
Just enough to tempt him to try others.  

Oxygen did better:  
One song about aerobic exercise,
Another of a caveman discovering fire, 
And more about hospital emergency rooms 
And aviators setting altitude records
And even one about astronauts.  

Then came the gases we can't breathe.  

Carbon monoxide, full strength?  
Dark depressing sagas of suicide, 
And a reminder of how lucky he had been 
To have found as happy a life as he had.  
There but for the grace of God ...

A recipe for smog
Yielded laments for the lost virginity of Earth
And pleas for future generations 
To strive to live more in harmony with nature.  

Cyanide gave him folk-style ballads
Of murderers getting their just reward,
Along with a protest song or two
Against the death penalty.  

Another time, amidst thoughts of the Holocaust, 
The deadly vapors whispered to him 
Of the faith that lingers after hope is gone, 
Then roared out an anthem of hate so stirring he hid it away
Lest those who agreed with its message be roused to action.  

A friend into science fiction suggested
 the carbon dioxide atmosphere of Mars 
Or the methane and ammonia of the outer planets.  

With the C-oh-two he expected sagas of the past glories
Of ancient civilizations along the banks of the canals
But instead heard songs he thinks will be sung
By human colonists a hundred years hence.  

The outer-planet mix hinted of life forms forever adrift
Amidst alien cloudscapes, 
Their hopes and dreams and fears 
Too strange to really describe, 
Even in the unearthly scales he could almost but not quite hear.  

His list continues to grow,
As do his circles of friends, 
Both at the University 
And on the Internet.  
If you see him, tell him I said Hello.  


                                     -- Tom Digby
                                     Written 17:47 hr 08/13/2005
                                     Edited  16:18 hr 09/04/2005
                                     Edited  23:43 hr 09/05/2005
