Jam Mechanics S1E06: Oh No, The Bird

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Happy New Year! On our 6th episode of Jam Mechanics, we go down memory lane (way, WAY down memory lane). Get your new Calendars pinned up and mark "Jam Mechanics" for every other Monday.

Jam Mechanics is a podcast hosted by Matt (The Narcissist Cookbook) and Bug (Bug Hunter) where we challenge each other to write a song demo from scratch every episode.

Our Music:
⁠⁠The Narcissist Cookbook

⁠⁠⁠⁠Bug Hunter⁠⁠

Feel free to reach out to us at:
Both: hello@jammechanics.com
Bug: bug@jammechanics.com
Matt: tnc@jammechanics.com
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-- SPOILERS FOR THIS EPISODE BELOW --

BUG'S SONG
Matt's Challenge: Your First Memory
Title: Memories
Lyrics:
There were roses in the garden
My toys were on the lawn
My brother rode a bicycle
Watched closely by my mom

I toddled off the patio
I often wandered off
And quickly get corralled by
My sweetheart of a dog

These are the details
These are the memories
These are the moments always cut from documentaries
These are the details
These are the memories
That never stick

I was just a baby in the backyard
Learning one thing at a time
The shapes and colors turning
Into object ‘fore my eyes

It was an early autumn evening
The first I could recall
I crunch the leaves beneath my feet
My dad records it all

These are the details
These are the memories
These are the moments always cut from documentaries
These are the details
These are the memories
That never stick

They called me in for dinner but
Before I headed in
They handed me a cup of kibble
Filled up to the brim

I toddled to the doghouse
Thats when God, she hit record
My first memory is getting all my shit rocked by a bird

Can’t choose the details
Can’t choose the memories
Can’t choose the scars they leave so sudden, unexpectedly
Can’t choose the details
Can’t choose the memories
I wish we weren’t so primed to focus on upsetting things
Can’t choose the details
Can’t choose the memories
That seem to nest inside your head
The awful details
That form these memories
But if I could instead
I’d choose the details
The little memories
And make ‘em stick
----------
MATT'S SONG
Bug's Challenge: "Calendar"
Title: The Year of Confusion
Lyrics:
In 46 BC, although they didn’t call it 46 BC of course, the Roman Empire experienced what came to be known as the Year Of Confusion. Up until then, people understood a year to be 12 months long like we do. And honestly, their calendar looked a lot like ours. Months had either 29 or 31 days except February, which in order to keep the calendar aligned with the natural lunar year, could have anywhere between 23 or 28 days. But that flexibility alone was not enough to keep the calendar aligned with the Earth’s seasons.

And so every few years to make sure things didn’t get too out of whack, the Romans would have not a leap day but an entire leap month called Mercedinus, or Intercalaris, which generally fell at the end of February. And to be decided by a religious leader. The keeper of God’s time.

This wasn’t why they called 46 BC the Year Of Confusion.

The problem with having these leap months and having them be inserted at the will of religious leaders, is that they would often decide a year would be 22 days longer when a supporter (or they themselves) were in political office. Giving them another 3 weeks of rule, or at the very least political influence. Or he would decide against including a leap month when one was desperately needed in order for the calendar to make any kind of sense when an opponent was in office. Because that would get them out the door quicker. And thus the years, time itself, was beholden to political whim and corruption.

But even this is not the reason why 46 BC was called the Year of Confusion.

No, the reason 46 BC was known as the Year Of Confusion is because that was the year that Julius Caesar said “enough is enough”. No more bending the calendar to your will, from now on the calendar will align with the lunar year naturally, without human intervention. And so the Julian calendar, effectively the calendar that we use today, was introduced.

Except, not quite. Because in order for the Julian calendar to align with the start of the lunar year, 46 BC was 445 days long. One last blast of nonsense powerful enough to, they hoped, wash the old away with the new. And then from 45 BC, the years progressed much as we recognize, with the occasional leap day to make up for minute slippage.

All this effort, to align the calendar of man with the mysterious lunar mechanism, which seemed at the time to hold everything together with a level of perfection that mankind was incapable of recreating on Earth. Which our attempts to capture had led only to the already powerful hoarding evermore unfathomable power.

That’s the strange thing about time, it’s not real.

Not how we experience it anyway, our scientific knowledge today makes even the smartest of those in ancient Rome look like children. And yet our years are still built around how fast this little ball is flung around its closest star. I guess it’s difficult to remember that when a day isn’t a collection of hours anymore, but of minutes and seconds. Our lives are being broken down into ever smaller increments. So small that we have lost sight of when a day truly begins and ends.

Yeah, maybe we don’t gain or lose an entire month anymore due to the political machine, but there are huge swathes of the world’s population who barely see sunlight for 3 months out of the year, rising as it does before they clock in and setting before they clock out.

Is this natural?

It feels natural.

But I think it’s difficult to truly understand a system when you are inside it.

46 BC, the Year Of Confusion, must have felt for some like a year of realization. That the relationship between our time and God’s time is not 1 to 1. That there are 93 million miles between the human race and the sun. And that our moments are best measured by the turning of the leaves, by the freezes and the thaws. By the people who come into our lives too late and fall out of our lives too soon.

Everything moving, always.

But as a rule, as a kindness, too slow for us to notice