Henry Kaiser, "The Stormy Present"

From 'Henry Kaiser in Antarctica: Journal Five', December 6, 2001

Setting a DAT recorder at the geographic pole, I take out my acoustic guitar (in this case an all-graphite Rain Song guitar that I have used for years as a boat guitar on dive trips; it will remain here as a gift to Pole Station) and I ready myself to attempt to play slide guitar, using the South Pole as my guitar slide. The night before, I sat out by the pole and searched for a slack key tuning that would right for this job. Finding one that I liked, I checked it with many station residents, all of whom approved. Messing around with the pole for an hour, I found that I could produce lots of sound effects and textures, but melody, groove, and harmony seemed quite elusive. I spent another 30 minutes trying to play melodies and licks, kneeling next to the pole, as my hands and knees became colder and colder. Gloves were on and off; finger picking became more and more problematic in the 40°F below zero air. After 90 minutes, I was a little tired, so I stood up, put my gloves on again, inserted some chemical hand warmers and held the guitar's strings up against the pole. I stared off to the distant horizon, across the miles of whiteness, and I idly strummed the guitar with a gloved right hand as I slid the guitar's neck along the pole. After drifting into an empty-minded trance for a while, I returned to the mundane world to find myself strumming a peculiar rhythm pattern with my gloved right hand. What did it sound like? It seemed American Indian in cadence, not something that I had played before. It was quite enjoyable. Suddenly, I realized that the American flag next to me was flapping with exactly the same rhythm! The music had literally came to me OUT OF THE AIR. Next I tried fretting and sliding against the pole to find melody and chords. A riff jumped out at me. It was fun to play. Again, I drifted off into no-mind state for a while, as I continued to play. My thoughts returned to the pole and the Race to the Pole that the heroes of the early age of Antarctic exploration had participated in. Hmmmm? This rhythm fit my idea of a slow race, as was the race to the pole. Suddenly I had a set of musical ideas for a piece about that historic race and I was instantly able to play it! I checked the frozen DAT machine, and it was still operational. I ran off five takes of the tune without many mistakes. This is the kind of inspiration that I had hoped for on the ice, and here it was, like some kind of miracle out of the air, when I least expected it.