Waldo Says: September 2010
My life has calmed down towards the end of this month. I have learned a lot following the passing of my Father about people and myself. Most lessons in life are hard and most leave scars on you so you won’t forget them. All lessons whether they be painful or pleasant are good and I believe learning about ones self is the main reason we walk this Earth. All this learning is set in motion by the Almighty for our own benefit and for his glory.
In my opinion those of you who read this site and don’t believe in a God Almighty as I do should always have the right to do so. I honor that about you and believe you must be much tougher and more confidant than me. Those who know me will tell you that I am as strong as a Gorilla and as bright as any PhD. Yet, I find a great comfort in thinking there is a greater being than me putting my reality together and helping me get through the rough spots because if I am all that I truly have to rely on….I am in trouble.
It amazes me that people who are agnostics or atheists seem to want others to follow their lead into a life of fear and some even work to eliminate God’s references from the culture of the United States.
This confuses me because in this country people have “Freedom of religion” not freedom from religion. So if our forefathers wrote the Constitution and based our laws on concepts adopted from their religious beliefs…Well, that was their prerogative and trying to change that makes the person attempting to do so a kind of saboteur in my eyes.
Standing back and really looking at the United States as a nation. The basic principals that founded the United States have existed for over two hundred years and seem to work well as they have yielded the most powerful, progressive and influential nation mankind has ever seen in its entire 5 million year existence on the planet.
Yes there will always be crooked politicians and shady government bureaucrats using the systems for their own gain but that is the fault of human nature and not the system itself. In any barrel of Apples you are always going to get a few bad ones.
If you study the history of mankind as I have you will find that most people who have reached phenomenal peaks of material wealth and “success” (if that is what you want to call it) are usually somewhat self absorbed and nearly always lonely. They miss what is important in life and never seem to get it. They surround themselves with stuff and shallow self absorbed, opportunistic, people like themselves. Their efforts afford them a lifestyle of physical comfort yet they live in fear as they have to constantly be looking over their shoulders to protect their “interests.” I didn’t make this up, John Lennon a member of the Beatles said this about thirty years ago as he explained what it was like to be a wealthy rock star and he should know.
So there is very little comfort in their surroundings and their quest is eternal as there are no bounds as to what they will be forced to do to get what they want because they really don’t know what that is. A good example is that guy who can afford a million dollar sports car and uses it to date the Los Angeles “10” blonde bombshell who he escorts out of the passenger seat wearing very short skirts and high heels at very public social functions.
Mr. Sports car never understands that the Bombshell is actually dating his sports car and his wealth and its potential for the cushy lifestyle it will afford her. Gold diggers are some of the most conniving creatures on the planet. They are as astute in deception and manipulation as Mr. Sports car is in business if not more so. But Mr. Sports car actions are dictated by his ego and not his heart so he is doomed to her usage.
There was a time when I sculpted, painted and wrote poetry. I was a young man and eager to learn more about life and I would create art for hedonistic reasons and seldom for the approval of others. It never really mattered to me if others understood my art so long as I did.
You see art in its purest form is done for the artist not for the appreciation of the casual observer. Thus the creation is for the creator to vent the beauty or the emotion he feels and seldom for the observer to try and interpret. This is why most of the greatest artists in history were reclusive and lonely in life and their work wasn’t appreciated until long after their death. Famous artist usually became famous only after some marketer or second party figured out how to profit from the artists work. Most artists lived lives in semi sanity or persecution. Art is the only true expression of the progression or evolution of man. It shows how evolved he is emotionally and spiritually as he interprets his surroundings and even his own relevance.
Most people would have you believe that science, technology and math knowledge are the true barometers of human evolution. But physicists are now learning that even mathematics is not a constant, just as space and time are now known to not be constants. Because of this knowledge I believe that creating and loving are the only things a human being can do that are Godlike and thus the only things of importance a human being can engage in.
I am currently reading the book “Physics of the Impossible” written by Michio Kaku. It is a book which talks about what mankind may be capable of accomplishing technologically in the near and far future. Kaku is brilliant and explains things for the layman to understand and get his head around. He is sort of the Carl Sagan for the 21st century. In “Physics of the Impossible” you will read more about what I just told you about space, time and mathematics.
One of the things Kaku talks about in this book is the possibility of other civilizations in space. Well, here is something for the weird files I want to tell you about. The “Voyager” spacecraft launched in 1976 which has flown the farthest away from Earth of any probe man has ever launched and which is still broadcasting to back to Earth is acting strange. Early this year it started broadcasting strange signals that no one at NASA can decipher. They are not sure if it is an electronic glitch or something even stranger. You can read all about it at http://weirdsciences.net/2010/05/13/voyager-unknown-signal-mystery-did-voyager-find-aliens/
Before I get back to my story here is another LSR guy I found on the net who wants to do what I have been proposing for years. He wants to drag race two rocket cars to 600 miles per hour. His name is Glenn Brittian and here is his website for you to learn more about his project. http://rocketcrusade.com/
One art project I did many years ago which took about a year to complete was to have T-shirts printed up (usually white letters on a black shirt) that would challenge common precepts of human nature and I would wear them throughout my daily life. I would wear them and then I would wait for reactions from people reading the shirts. Some of the shirts said things like “Materialism is weakness”, “Your Ego is not your friend”, “Competitiveness is weakness” and another half a dozen concepts and observations that I cannot even remember now.
At the time I was also a very fit sort of body builder, I had big muscular arms and a strong chest. I was a walking machine gun with writing on the barrel. Even though I usually had a smile on my face I looked like I could clean your clock if you gave me any guff. Time passed and I went about my life wearing the T shirts nearly everyday digesting and interpreting any comments that were made about them.
Most people simply didn’t understand the shirts. Sometimes people would challenge me and ask me to explain myself. After I did most people had to agree that we as humans are desperately flawed and sometimes it would lead to introspective thinking on their part. And this is what true art does, it opens the mind and emotions of the observer. This was the last art project I ever did.
I tried doing some “Art shows” because I thought that it was what I was supposed to do and what everyone else does and I did well selling many of the pieces I created but I really saw no point in producing clever products for sale to pompous pseudo intellectuals. I hated explaining myself to pretentious, arrogant people hoping they would understand my work. I had become more of a salesman than an artist and that made my art work moot. After a few successful shows I stopped all the art for show and focused on land speed racing.
I remember when I first met Jocko Johnson he told me the exact same story about his early life as a sculptor. It took me five years to play out the exact same scenario in my own life and come to where I understood what he was telling me. You see land speed record vehicle design is not just engineering, it is actually art but it is the art of the cutting edge progression of moving vehicles. It is about the reach with the mind and physical materials towards the impossible.
When someone says they want to build a car that will reach 1,000 miles per hour, my mind asks…. What will it take to reach 2,000 miles per hour and beyond? I think of land speed record vehicle design and campaigning a record vehicle as “Techno- kinetic art” a phrase I coined and passed on the Ky Michealson many years ago when he was putting on an art show of his own rocket powered machines.
In that vain I have decided to give you all a few gifts this month. If you go on our “Media page” on the website www.sonicwind.com and watch the 8 new videos I had Ed Torsello post for you all. First there is a film I took of the Bugatti 100 Air racer of 1937. I took this at the EAA museum in Oshkosh Wisconsin last month. This air speed record monoplane was designed by the Belgian Louis D. de Monge and built in collaboration with Italian Ettori Bugatti of famous race car design fame. It was designed to reach nearly 500 miles per hour back when most high speed aircraft could barely exceed 300 miles per hour. Next to it on the museum floor are other aircraft of the same time period and next to them the Bugatti air racer looks like it just flew in from another planet. This plane is a perfect early example of the reach of the Techno kinetic artist.
Then there is footage I took of Jocko Johnson’s last streamliner car “The Spirit of Twenty Nine Palms” AKA the “Triple Nickel” he was building at the time of his death. I filmed it at a party thrown by the town of Twenty Nine Palms California about 14 years ago. Jocko and Joanie were there cooking tacos for everyone and Jocko had the aluminum body of the car semi completed and on display. He was testing his Powering ring 3 cycle radial engine for the car when he died the year before last.
There is also footage of my now deceased friend Glen May running his twin Nitrous Oxide and rubber fueled rocket engine go cart. It hit about 80 miles per hour and I believe it was one of the first rocket powered vehicles to ever run this fuel combination. I also have footage of Glen May in a rocket powered canoe somewhere but I have to find it and when I do I will have Ed Torsello post it here also.
Then there is a video of Art Arfons running his J-85 turbojet powered “Green Monster #27” land speed record motorcycle in 1989. Kenny Lyons and I were there to help as much as we could and consult Art. Art had called me and told me he was going to run the jet bike and to see him there. I wanted to get footage of the jet bike moving at speed running side by side with the jet bike. So I sat in the passenger window of our rented coupe and laying across the roof and using one of those very large video VHS recorders, I shot the bike as Kenny drove flat out side by side with the bike. Simply idling the jet bike roared away from us at 150 miles per hour but we did the best we could in the stock V6 cylinder powered sports coupe.
Kenny had the car floored at over 115 miles per hour and I had a hard time shooting with the wind trying to blow me off the roof of the car but it all turned out OK and here is the footage.
There are also a few films of a pulsejet powered motorcycle streamliner I built in the early 1990s and its engine testing. Pulse jet engines are hard to work with, skittish and unpredictable as you will see in the films. I took the jet bike to El Mirage to run it but it was plagued with engine problems so I eventually took it apart giving the pulsejet engine to Bob Lazar and later selling the bike chassis to a restorer.
The chassis was originally built by Sam Wheeler and ran a Norton 750cc motorcycle engine it held the motorcycle land speed record for single engine bikes in 1970 at 208 miles per hour. I bought it modified and then modified it a half a dozen times more myself for various projects. I sold it to a nostalgia group who restored it back to its original Norton running shape and I believe it is now on tour or at a museum somewhere.
So enjoy the films and realize the 40 year long journey I took to get to this time and place as I now build the greatest ground vehicle ever conceived by man…. Stay tuned….Waldo
