Of all the things I can attempt to describe, the moments I will never be able to share are those when I begin to encounter death and then finally succumb to it. What is my role in even preparing myself to recognize it when it begins to appear? Will I know what it is as I’ve never seen it? Does it have a sound, a smell, a feeling?

I don’t want to imagine that the body shutting down will be synonymous with pain; maybe it’s just the motor slowly coming to a quiet halt. I think most people afraid of death are more nervous about excruciating pain where life’s exit is a landmine blowing off your face, metaphorically speaking. Too often during our lives, we are shown gruesome deaths that titillate our sense of the unknown and pique our anxiety about stepping into something we won’t like. What if natural death were a calm walk among the flowers?

Then what after that? Well, my sense of things suggests that what I consider me will be something relatively unknown afterlife as I’ve known it ends if there’s anything at all. Like a newborn infant, the sense of self will be unaware that an “I” is present. First, the new non-organic transitional me will have to adjust to the light that illuminates my new reality; time is likely my new sun. Somewhere out of this vast expanse of the future, maybe I’ll be able to recognize that time is emanating out of everything and that it’s infinitely expanding, taking me with it.

Until this new awareness forms, I must learn my way. Language, as I knew it, will mean nothing and so it is not required to try to explain what has happened or where I am. In that way, it’s kind of like the DNA in a seed that bursts forth in a flurry of activity that ends up sending a single tiny bud out of the murky depth of soil into the sunlight. Little do the leaves know at this time that a flower will someday grace the top of the stem that stretches into the sky and will require a flying insect, seemingly from another dimension and certainly from another species, to randomly wander along and fertilize it so its offspring will inherit its genetic blueprint allowing it to move into the future. So, what did the DNA think about its future? It did not think; it simply grew into its reality. This is what we do before consciousness takes hold.

Faced with being one with the universe, there will be no orientation, no image of God or his son. We will be looking into the energy and matter creation element known as time. We will have merged from surfing on the wave of time as an organic entity to being a thread traversing the unknown while we learn to orient ourselves in the framework of time without physical being. If communication exists it could be on the quantum level with a kind of attenuation to threads and bands that pulse with information that exceeds any ability of us in human form to describe such a place.

Of course, death can just as well be the final cessation of all with a drift into the darkness of nothingness. But we already know that there is nothing known as nothing where a real void might exist. Time, exotic particles, dark matter, and gravity are all flowing through every nook and cranny of every corner of the universe. Even particles that exist momentarily as they flitter in and out of their quantum state are, in some respects, ever-present. If they are “here” or “not here,” they still exist in the potential and a kind of certainty that they will again be known.

Regarding human consciousness, we cannot yet be certain of where exactly that might be, how large it is, and if it’s transferable or ever-present. While the connectome may prove one day to be the structure within our minds that supports our consciousness, will we, upon making that determination be closer to the center of precisely where the point of self is? Is it larger than a molecule, could it be smaller, or does it simply exist in time?

But all of this is about life, not death. I guess I just have to accept that I cannot write of that which I know absolutely nothing about. Death will remain elusive until it is as intimate as it will ever be, and I will then own it.

I am the toad sitting upon a lump of coal by the dead tree in the woods; you ignored me as you walked by my pond. The world is turned upside down with her guts strewn about while the bowels of hell poison the atmosphere and threaten the very existence of us toads. How did things get this way? I can tell you most assuredly that it wasn’t from us amphibians; it wasn’t the insects, nor the birds, squirrels, or even the bears, that caused this topsy-turvy reordering of nature. It was humankind; it was your species.

My ancestors and I have croaked on countless evenings long before the appearance of any of the hairy, two-legged mammals. Matter of fact we trace our origins back to ancient wetlands when the earth was a far different place about 370 million years ago, and amphibians ruled. Of course, we didn’t appear then as we do now; while our lineage is from early amphibians, it wouldn’t be until 265 million years ago that the “mother toad” first appeared. We were here before the dinosaurs and survived as they disappeared. It was 55 million years ago that the first apes appeared, and then a mere 6 million years ago, the hominids started trekking over the land with their bipedal gait.

Through this passage of time immemorial, as evening falls, we bellow out a croak, assuring the other creatures that we are on watch over the night, waiting for the sun to return. We are the sentries that allow the rest of life to sleep securely while our star remains out of sight. We transition from our night lullaby to morning song, signaling to the other animals where freshwater has been accumulating. Our existence assures everything else that the water is healthy and that the balance of things is in check. If you no longer hear or see us, you yourself will already be long gone.

Let me explain why I’m here; I’ve been asked to communicate something with you that the toad community isn’t sure you can understand. I am the spokesvoice for the order of Anura in the family of Bufonidae, with a knowledge greater than your primitive thoughts allow. We know that you cannot see or comprehend anything that looks like truth yet, as your species is far too young.

You might ask why, after emerging from our earliest amphibious roots, we never took to further evolution and instead hunkered down and remained frogs and toads. After 13 million years of existence, a cataclysm was happening on Earth where an impact at the Wilkes Land crater caused the antipodal discharge of volcanic material at the Siberian Traps. This was the moment in history when the extinction of nearly 95% of marine life and about 70% of terrestrial life on Earth began. We were witnessing 350 million years of multicellular evolution coming to a screeching halt.

Yes, we survived where others perished. Shortly after this Permian extinction, the dinosaurs rose up to become our neighbors. Although they survived for 179 million years, it was an asteroid impact on Earth that would ruin their day. Again, we were on hand for another mass extinction where, this time, only 75% of life was going away. When the dust settled, the continent of Pangaea was a distant memory and had broken up into many parts. On all of them except Antarctica, the frogs and toads lived on to sing and bellow another day.

It was only 200,000 years ago that your species started walking on our lands. It has only taken you a little more than 200 years to create a situation where the writing scrawled on the wall suggests that you are intent on bringing on another extinction. We know that our kind will survive, but we also know that if you do not mend your ways, you will not be around to see us once again rule the planet that you believe you have divine rights to.

We live at the water’s edge, coming out at night to sing our songs. Our eyes can detect a single photon, and so to us, the night sky is a riot of light emerging out of history; our version of the movies is found in the beauty all around us, emanating from all points in the universe. Our food, air, and water are all free. We live in a symbiotic ecosystem that gives and takes. Some of us can live for many decades and never feel indebted to anyone or anything that allowed for our existence. We are not beholden or frightened by anything as we have known our place here on Earth for 100’s of millions of years. So you should ask yourselves, what really makes you so smart in your servitude and indebtedness?

You are afraid of your own place here. You cannot be sure of your continued survival due to your violent tendencies. You have created mythologies that you hope will help you cope with so much uncertainty, but you are deeply fearful of the unknown and the stranger. You fight one another in war and strive to destroy all that is wild. Instead of working with your skills, you are ignoring that your kind is intentionally despoiling the Earth in much the same way as mindless asteroids that accidentally crashed into our planet did so very long ago.

Your ignorance seems programmed to end your reign after only 200,000 years among us. Your disappearance portends great things for the kingdom of Anura as we will once again have the front row seats to watching what comes next while enjoying the wetlands of our planet’s return to health and our skies clear of the smoke of your fires.

There is no more pop culture; there are backdrops for celebrity. Influencers require these props to display products while the event becomes secondary to their own promotion. The musicians might also be influencers but their musicianship becomes almost an afterthought to how they are living on stage. In previous generations, there were frontstage and backstage behaviors; that line is now blurred as “Always On” culture has become a global phenomenon thanks to the internet. Somewhere, someone is waiting for tweets to come in as they start their voyeuristic day of peering into other people’s lives. Back in the day, the gatekeepers and process delays due to printing or television schedules didn’t allow real-time living with others, but now, with instant broadcast abilities using YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, the consumer can have a surrogate experience with their idol as it’s happening.

In a sense, we’ve transitioned from participation at a distance to a more intimate proximity, with those at the center of our attention being nearly instantly accessible. The need then to craft moments that can play out live on the stage of Instagram becomes the around-the-clock performance of those who are commanding our attention. Maybe the good thing for them is that these types of famous-for-being-famous careers don’t last a long time, and they are allowed to return to normal life at some point.

For those drunk on this life in the limelight, the fickle audiences that quickly move between personalities living in the hype cycle will do away with the stale as they jump to what’s fresh, and that flash-in-the-pan moment that was their domain will quickly be extinguished. We are yet to fully grasp what the impact will be on these sudden celebrities when their internet shine dulls, but I’d imagine we’ll see some spectacular flame-outs that will end up catapulting another personality who is busy capturing the carnage of the star they are replacing.

On May 19th, 2016, I bought my first Eurorack module. Five days later, I signed up for Muffwiggler.com. This all-things-synthesizer forum was started back in late 2006 by Mike McGrath and is a global phenomenon that created the largest online synth forum and repository of knowledge for the field that has yet existed. Two years after starting the site, Mike spoke of his 10,000th post in reverence; now, more than ten years later, the forum hosts over 2 million posts.

Yesterday, it was announced that Mike had passed away. There are no other details; there’s not even a confirmation if it happened yesterday, a week ago, or last month.

The strange thing about his passing for me is that it created a new type of void. Sure, I’ve known of plenty of people dying during my lifetime, including people who have made tremendous impacts, but this is the first death in the internet age of someone who created a global community that I was part of where the main objective was people helping other people. Never before in the history of humanity were diverse people from around our Earth able to communicate as a kind of guild to help one another in near real-time before the internet made this possible. While it is obvious there were many other forums prior to this one, this is the first I was a member of whose founder has passed away.

Muffwiggler generated a minor controversy during the past few years due to its colorful name (influenced by the Big Muff and the Wiggler guitar pedals);  it would also drive many a user away due to some of the juvenile hostility of users. Through it all, though it has been the place to learn about some arcane concepts and discover ideas and methods shared by more than 45,000 users from around the globe. To that end, it has been an incredible resource that I hope continues to evolve and that its vast library of knowledge is pulled forward. Rest in power, Mr. Muff Wiggler.

I have issues. Issues with others are more than likely actually issues with me. There are moments when I feel triggered for no great reason. This morning at the first coffee shop I stopped at it was after hearing the fourth and then the fifth Red Hot Chili Pepper song. The barista had tuned in to a Spotify channel that gave him exactly what he wanted, but the redundancy of the songs was seriously annoying to me. The funny thing is that I grew up listening to albums and often I’d play them multiple times. That was 40 years ago, and now I’ve grown accustomed to random playlists. Even 35 years ago, I was making my own mix tapes, and I made a load of them so I could try to avoid the redundancy of hearing the same thing twice a week. So, without having ordered yet, I packed up and left.

At the next coffee shop, I was again about to pack up shortly after arriving when the woman with her toy dog left. Then, I had to contend with the self-important macho blathering of the firemen next to me. The deal is that I never wanted to come to this coffee shop in the first place, as I know it’s busy in the morning, and I cannot help but listen to the banality going on around me. There are times my ears feel especially sensitive to the herd’s ruminations about bullshit, and I’ll either witness their descent into stupidity while I sit aghast in horror while at other times I must vacate the place out of fear that this special brand of doltish inanity could be infectious.

I readily admit this aspect of my personality is annoying to me. It is part of my road rage and a general sense of anger when I find myself at a loss for the sudden intrusion of other people’s hostility. I’m well aware of needing to find my inner zen, but the proximity of the trigger so near the surface of irrationality too often wins the day.

Time to order some earplugs.