i'm a GIANT... and so is my reality
wake up and live, sheeple!
one of the things I’ve come across recently during my toe-dip in the geology pool is the ‘giant tree people’. they’re kinda like flat earth “truthers” but instead they believe that, millenia ago, giant trees were a thing. and the ‘evidence’ is in places like these:
so this is devil’s tower in wyoming, usa. it’s actually a volcanic plug which means that it was magma within a volcanic vent which cooled down, then the rest of the surrounding volcano eroded away and the harder rock of the cooled magma remained. i came across a youtube video (which is just... a wonderful combination of grating EDM and google images) about volcanic plugs and there was a discussion on there about the giant tree theory. and apparently one of the big “clues” for giant trees is this columnar basalt.
basalt is an igneous rock which is basically one version of cooled lava. basalt is everywhere, it’s like one of the most prolific rocks about on planet earth. i like to imagine at one point in history its lava was just spewing out like champagne in a baz lhurmann’s great gatsby.
anyway, in certain conditions (i believe it has to do with temperature), basalt cools and forms these hexagonal columns which look peculiar and very, very cool.
someone in the EDM geology video commented a really, really extensively long comment about how columnar basalt actually indicates the remnants of a giant tree. the comment was so long. here’s a snippet:
Basalt and petrified wood have nearly identical silica-content. I can observe 100 petrified tree stumps and 100 examples of columnar jointing and find that the only difference is scale. The non-existence presently of giant trees certainly does not preclude the possibility that they existed in the past. First of all, the reasoning I have just laid out is, in fact, scientific evidence that such trees did exist in the past.
scientific evidence! and he didn’t even leave his chair! and he said the word preclude.
i had to read more. I had to actually understand what the conversation was, because it felt so wild and… yeah. i found this video, called “this little video will turn you upside down (warning)”
for some reason this giant tree video is postured as a “wake up and experience your own true self” kind of thing. like, if you believe that giant trees once existed, you too will have the power of self-actualisation. to quote it: “wake up and live and realise that the power lies within you. you are the tree of life!”
and people in the comments are going like this:
and i’m like “that’s great. self-belief. i love that for you. but have you considered that volcanoes exist?”
it kinda reminds of me “i believe in dinosaurs, they believe in me, and if they believe in me, i can do anything”
but at least with that one, a) it’s adorable, and b) the dinosaurs actually existed. maybe if i believe in volcanoes, they’ll believe in me too?
i get it, it feels nice to believe in something magical. it feels like to believe in something so beautiful and crazy as giant trees. but isn’t volcanoes, and colliding continental plates, and everything else that actually happened in the last 4 billion years just as beautiful and crazy? i think it is, at least. and at least believing in that stuff doesn’t warp my youtube algorithm with jordan peterson recommendations.
for example: india used to be part of a supercontinent which consisted of other countries such as the antarctic and australia. then when gondwana (as the continent was called) broke up, india eventually ‘sailed’ up and scrunched right into the bottom of what was to become asia. and that “scrunch” became the himalayas! now TELL ME, giant tree people (none of whom read this newsletter) — isn’t that just as cool!? yeah, i thought so.
this is why I want to write songs about geology. this is why I’m planning a show and album around this theme. there is so much cool stuff to share and it kind of blows my mind that a lot of it isn’t common knowledge. i want to make this fun and colourful and silly and cool, so other people will find it fun and cool too.
music news
another live video is up on youtube! this song, ‘i miss everything’ is a song for when you miss people very, very much.
i met up with the band on friday night and we did pub & pizza. elliot and jack drank a guiness and nic had a ginger ale. i had a bulmers, which, i wonder if it’s an embarrassing drink to drink or not. anyway i hope these facts sustain you until our next meet up. also we are planning some nice things for the summer!
things i liked
they found a fossil of a dinosaur which was killed on the day the asteroid hit! reminds me of this tiny song i wrote about dinos
power pop band romero are from australia and just dropped their debut album which has some rad songs
i really like this artist’s photographs of rocks. especially the accompanying text: “I do not love the rocks forever, and I do not love every rock the same way, so I take their portrait to remember, because I do love the rocks so much.”
another dino related thing — artist greer stothers is an illustrator with a degree in evolutionary biology, and her art is like… so great
ps. this youtube comment about ‘basalt raves’
have a great week! next week i wanna share a demo with you, so stay tuned for that ***exclusive*** thing.
until then, Truth&Love 💜
olivia