Open the Door of the Cosmos

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The ability to find beauty, both backwards and forwards, is something I've learned from our Very Special Guest, my friend Earl Carlson, who I've known in New Orleans, New York, and now the Middle West. Every month we challenge each other's taste by trading five songs based on themes like "camp" and "death". He's always fiddling with surprising projects and making genre-blurred music, such as this magnificent track that soundtracked my night flight to Vienna. (Here's his Instagram, but like everyone else in my life, I'm harassing him to use Bluesky instead; maybe he'll start doing things on it if you follow him.) 

Earl owns a pickup truck, enjoys telling me about professional wrestling, and almost every time we speak, he offers an observation about friendship or creativity that leaves me a little misty-eyed. When I asked him the Official Midnight Radio Question, he responded with a poem, which caught me off guard because I did not know Earl wrote poetry. 

And so: "Do you believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe?"

I’ve found my way to the river again
last winter I fell through the ice
many springs ago I couldn’t climb
up your muddy banks
so I let you carry me through the rapids
down towards your swimming holes
do you start or end
some nights I wonder of all the struggle
you’ve seen and caused
the wildfires licking at your hips
making ash of plans
I wonder of your torrents and your seasons
where nothing but cracked earth lay
baptisms and skinny dipping
and rainbow trout
we have seen and been

4

I do not understand poetry, so I asked Earl to explain his poem to me even though I know you're not supposed to do this. He sighed with the very specific mixture of exasperation and love that makes a friendship worthwhile. A few hours later, I received this explication of what we will hear tonight:

“So the gist of this is we start in a weird cosmic but grounded space that feels familiar but a bit strange. It's techno. It's dancy. It's leftfield. But also comfortable. It's our vibe right now. Or my vibe right now. I've always tried to make things that impress my friends, that resonate with my friends, but I also struggle with making 'normal' music. I find myself getting frustrated with the output. It's never quite what I hope it'll be. The artists in the first section of tonight's mix seem to be finding their own spaces. Things that feel real."

"I moved back to southeastern Michigan a couple years ago, and I think a lot about Berlin's techno scene being added to the UNESCO world heritage list—this feels like the erasure of something important, while honoring something else important."

"This year I tried my hand at making dub techno, but I struggled to be engaged. I found myself asking why? Why am I using this minor chord—what's beneath this? These subtle drums—am I making muzak or am I making something that sings?"

"Ras G passed away, and it hit home—not because I loved him, but because I recognized he was in our lineage: an SP-404 and a belief he could ride with the ancestors if he sampled them just right. Carlos Niño is doing the same but through a different lens, which tapped into something here. Mandré was a new find for me, from 1977, a decade before I was born, but he's here in the lineage. And my god, Gil Scott—this is the despair that sits as a partner to the cosmos. Any minority voice knows that despair, rage, anger, hopelessness is part and parcel along with the expansive hope and possibility of the cosmos. Black Atlantis."

"Cannibal Ox was my first touch of this vein, this river, this experience. It was them or Binary Star—I didn't know that rap could sound like this, or maybe that music could feel like this. These two projects were the doors for me. This mix is an answer to the question of whether I believe in god or any spiritual dimension to the universe."

"The written answer is: I don't know. What I do know is that stepping into this river, feeling the current—it feels right. For the first time, it feels like I'm part of a lineage. It's the horrors, it's the sorrow, it's the pain, it's a country, a separate lineage telling us that we aren't enough, that we need to show up differently. It's the joy, it's the community, it's the knowledge that my ancestors are singing spirituals, and before that singing in languages I don't know. It's knowing that after me there will be more."

"I know that I was raised looking up to a white Christ with a pastor telling me I'm born with sin. I looked for my own answers, searching desperately for meaning. Only now, as I raise my own part of this lineage am I starting to feel settled with the answer of 'I don't know but I want to swim in this river.'"

5

Tonight there will be no extravagant sheets of reverb or uncomfortably long slow-motion songs. Something gave me the sense that I should leave Earl's mix alone. Maybe because there is the clear sense of a rarefied vision within this sequence of songs. Or maybe because Earl sent me a fully mixed audio file and said, "You should leave it alone."

He's right. Sometimes there's nothing to do but step aside and let the music play.

1. JakoJako & Rødhåd - Passeri/Helonias
   In Vere • WSNWG, 2022 • Bandcamp
2. Lyder - Brack
   Weird.fishes • tunnel.visions, 2025 • Bandcamp
3. Rrose - Rib Cage
   Please Touch • Eaux, 2023 • Bandcamp
4. Skee Mask - Session Add
   Compro • Ilian Tape, 2018 • Bandcamp
5. Polygonia - Ceaseless Motion
   Ceaseless Motion • Timedance, 2026 • Bandcamp
6. The Upsetters - Super Ape
   Super Ape • Black Ark, 1976
7. Prince Far I & The Arabs - Final Chapter/Shake the Nation
   Cry Tuff Dub Encounter Chapter III • Daddy Kool, 1980 • Bandcamp
8. Ras G - Been Cosmic
   Back on the Planet • Brainfeeder, 2013 • Bandcamp
9. Sun Ra & His Arkestra - Door of the Cosmos
   Sleeping Beauty • El Saturn, 1979 • Bandcamp
10. Carlos Niño & Friends - It's All Happening! (featuring Madlib, Jamire Williams and Dexter Story with strings by Miguel Atwood-Ferguson)
    Flutes, Echoes, It's All Happening! • Stones Throw, 2016 • Bandcamp
11. Mandré - Solar Flight (Opus I)
    Mandré • Motown, 1977
12. Gil Scott-Heron - Home Is Where the Hatred Is
    Pieces of a Man • Flying Dutchman Records, 1971 • Wax Poetics
13. Cannibal Ox - Iron Galaxy
    The Cold Vein • Definitive Jux, 2021
14. Binary Star - Reality Check
    Masters of the Universe • 2020 • Bandcamp
15. Wata Igarashi - Mineral
    Mastery Quantum Sound • Houndstooth, 2026 • Bandcamp
16. Vince Staples and Lil Baby - East Point Prayer (Vocals only)
    Ramona Park Broke My Heart • 2022
17. Erykah Badu - Out of My Mind, Just in Time (Vocals only)
    New Amerykah, Part Two (Return of the Ankh) • 2010

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Transcript

SPEAKER_04 32:20

This is the Are you ready? Are you ready? I step with I'm not sure. This is the Epic.

unknown 34:10

Challenge. This is the Amazon. Sometimes the fit of the city is a good one.

SPEAKER_02 1:05:25

I'm on my way home ho ho ho I left three days ago, but no one seems to know I'm gone. Home is where the hatred is Home is filled with pain. And it might not be such a bad idea if I never Never went home again. Stand as far away from me as you can and ask me why. Hang on to your road, baby, close your eyes to watch me die. You keep saying, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it, God, did you ever die? To turn your six on inside out so that the world so that the world can watch you die. Let's fill down with my silence creating Home is with a new mother. Try to heal my broken heart. And it might not be such a bad idea if I never If I never went home again, home again, home again, home again.

unknown 1:08:27

Kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it, kick it, quit it, kick it, kick it home again, home again.

SPEAKER_00 1:09:14

It's a cold world out there. Sometimes I think I'm getting a little cross on it as well.

unknown 1:09:19

No, no.

SPEAKER_08 1:09:44

Life's ill. Sometimes life might kill. For the mega rock, did it grab my mic strike type L. It's life real, I can fit with life feel like earth, don't spin whirlwinds, might play life at a standstill. Dangerous, cause man kills instill, cat visualize life, battle like one line. Sometimes these pass see life be like incomplete light and be like I'ma live life after this one crime, one line from the megalom, no five. Everyone knows the city still, cat killed, still black man holds line. Gotta chill star. Your love, be the lightest Jamal. Work hard, Jamar, see, type all off. But that bar snaps off in the tacklar channel. But a ball handle, migrate mic, go to megalithic cannibal, eight mics. Drive, live, fly, fuck five. I want a hundred and eight mics.

SPEAKER_05 1:10:35

Yo, son, did you see that kid, yo? Fell out, yo, yo, son, he pulled it out.

SPEAKER_08 1:10:41

Digits, copinity, nine million, one floor, got silly, one city, one bird, hit milli, little girl, spinning curls, B60, living in the world, shitty. Yo, they spun your earth. Now shitty and wild follow my shoe. Blackhead, nigga story. I stole space through the crackhead. DT operate mechanically. Oh, go and slow-bo. Black kid, lock away, add a key, plus one four, powder, smoke, flow. Wildcat vapian, I met Arabian, laying in road back, holding drama, eight K smoke, like a salama, OK, joke and box, mix with OJ Wick, split back, quick, spinning three, six, oh, wait, C4, glue the door, number eight, summer face, take five with a knock, number nine, said run the play. To my girl, stereo, C E plus the K rope star. Start a wet that fuck the face of the place, check back to Santa Claus, California. I eight. P to see God locked up, cat boy, nine way. Come on, Matt Sue. It's no my face is like little black girl got got. And it hurts when they want her when we're not gonna make a difference. So we get locked, go in a shit and losing what we got. Come on, black Equal, Equal, Whoa.

SPEAKER_05 1:12:00

And if this crack in a basement, I can't stand that Jason and the displacement. Two step around stillborn, baby. Mother didn't want you, but you were still born. Boy, this world, of course, this pops is gone. What's the figure? So we step to the next pencil. That's a hustler infested with money and dying clusters. Right now, big worms, don't worry, the culture. We talk to people at its core. So those who have more than them, where to pick them. Under my vulture to the door, door done, sick on lack of the door, but you can round. If you put up a flower, everything is no grill roll. Grill roll, don't you force bottom with your head on 152, but number four's only half of the 34. So I can find the clean and death is the meeting. The cover four is the border. Right to the filling. What is in the mouth? The other chilling. I'm back there.

SPEAKER_01 1:14:32

I have a request tonight.

SPEAKER_02 1:14:37

When you hear this, that is the introduction.

SPEAKER_06 1:15:19

I rock the mic 110%. It's intimate. I keep the party moving like an immigrant. A binary star, superstar, it's no coincidence. Every verse is intricate. This ain't a circus intent. We don't rely on like them clowns in the kids. I'm used to being indigent. Who said it's all about the Benjamin? I want a fortune, I wanna make music and hit the lottery. Fortunately, my music is never watery. That's how it gotta be, as far as I can see. Maybe you should grab a telescope to see my viewers like astronomy. It ain't all about economy. So the fact that all these whack MCs is making G's don't bother me, honestly. My number one policy is quality. Never sell my soul, it's my philosophy, high velocity. Lyrics like nostra dynamics making privacy. I told you cats a long time ago, it ain't no stopping. I buy me sad, it's not a threat, it's a promise. Got everybody riding on my wagon like the homage. But still I never claim to be a big rap star. Cause no matter who you are, it's still a law who acts guard. But I'm believed this, most rappers can't achieve this. I'm bad to the bone, but X-rays can't even see this. See, I'm strategic. I let your money talk, bullshit. Walk while I keep it rollin' like paraplegic. Whoever's on the microphone, let it be known you in danger. I got necks like the boss and strangler. You ain't never heard of MC speak like this. And Rodney King ain't never felt it be like this.

SPEAKER_10 1:16:41

I wanna do something else.

SPEAKER_07 1:16:44

Get a grip on yourself, cause you ain't grippin' mine. Life and times out of line. Rap guys out of line, careers I finalize. Collide with the serenade cyanide. You've applied for suicide. The thing that makes killers hide, hang them high by their gold ring necktie. And drain them dry until templates are die. Now you ain't got, so you ain't that high. Wanna be aeronautic, then get swarmed for acting fly. Masterminds crafty rhymes, they'll win from drafty lines. They kill spines like the alpines. Running up on saline to binds a closing counter of the worst kind. Go at some cats and her line, miracle turpentine. Who wanna taste mine? I carry hell on the waistline. God give the baseline so let the phlegm fly. I some I seven five through the MI. When I forcefully jedi in the pool, I red eye. Hands fly and I shark shoot dead eye. Snooze proof that by Merry Lou flippin' eye, paper palm, ripping eyes, stomping eyes, simplified, represent temperature signify, working rhyme. Make nothing similar for Gemini. We're in this perimeter, some Lemini. Cats be cut dry, I'm a wild wet guy. I be raining precipitation till it's one inch from neck high. Rest black mints guy. Without an alibi, who said you rap tight? You come a rapper by a slicer, it's rap, scalpel guys, quick as apple pie. I'm learning all schools of thought and shit you babble by conceptual, intellectual box life. So the oxide rhymes flow like a rock slide. You must have forgot I slap your ass and I need a cacao. Who's bad it? Broken up, open cut, dipped in paroxy, depth to the pop fly.

SPEAKER_01 1:18:18

Honey Rash plus double bastard, better not slip. I'ma crash ya, you ain't shot out ya. Capitl slit, I'ma father. I was out in Winnie Mad a shot stitch with a ladder. Any count, yeah, to a lamb, too.

SPEAKER_10 1:18:43

That's a big fish, I'm a big fish. A billion dollars in the top of my subject, my feelings and five crucial, or really yeah. Just say I got on my back. Can I cut a furnish, make you notice? Can you fly enough to make no cards? What a funny at this point, like you want you to find. I can't understand notice you find crazy work. I'm gonna keep on spinning strengths. I'm fine, I try my way. I want you to come.

SPEAKER_12 1:20:09

And now my grandma lava thinks he was there. And I die for you, I cry for you, and pop for you, and break for you, and take for you, and make you do if you want me to. I will I pray for you, crochet for you, make it from scratch for you, leave out the lash for you, go to the stone for you, do it some more for you, do what you want me to, yes, I'm a full for you. I'm a recovering under cover. Recovering coming up, I can't get over, recovering under cover all now my coming on thinks he was another and I laughed for you and cried for you, hopefully, break for you, hate for you, and I'll hate you too if you want me to. I gotta do my love for you, children's good, pain for you, it's true, it's true. Thought I was doing you, yes, I will fall for you.