Friday, November 17, 2000

Musicking and the Skylab Lounge

One of my favorite places at Amundsen-Scott South Pole Station is the Skylab Lounge. There are several lounges in South Pole City, but Skylab is special. That is where most of the public musical instruments are kept. It is also one of the only places to relax where there are windows.

The Skylab building is next to the dome and is connected to it by a tunnel. It is an ugly orange five-story story building and sits in a crater formed by the constant digging out of snow that has drifted up over the years. At one time, it was much taller than the landscape. Now the lounge on the third floor is only a few feet above the snow surface.

Most of the building is used by the science techs to conduct experiments, but one floor is used just as a lounge.

When alone, it is a great place to read or take a nap on the couch in the warm sunlight shining through the windows that dominate three sides of the room. When with a group, it is a great place to make music.

You never know whom you will find up there on any given night after dinner. And with a whole room full of various musical instruments, you never what will happen. There is a keyboard, drum set, bass guitar, electric guitars with amps, acoustic guitars, banjos, an accordion, several saxophones, a ukulele, a violin, a tambourine, and a few other odd instruments. Due to the excessive cold and extremely low humidity, they are not all in very good shape, but they are playable. They are relics left behind from Poleys past. And we are grateful for them.

My favorite instrument to play is the keyboard. Not just because it makes all sorts of interesting sounds and has all kinds of nifty functions. Not just because it can make sound effects from places like forests or oceans or outer space or other far-off lands. I enjoy playing the keyboard because it sits right up against the window with the best view around. As I play, I create whatever musical backdrop seems fitting for the vista in front of me: people walking across the desolate landscape wearing so many layers of strange clothing they might as well be Martians; the colorful flags of the Antarctic Treaty Nations flying in all their showy grandeur, encircling the candy-striped ceremonial pole, with its mirror ball reflecting the bright light of the sun; flags flapping fiercely in the wind whipping around the loose snow in whirls of white as the blurry figures of those who dare to brave the blizzard slowly trudge past; and the Geographic South Pole itself-- the reason we are at this spot; the marker that indicates the very bottom of the world; the goal on which men had staked their lives to trek; and here we were.

Sometimes I sneak up to the lounge during a break while I’m working. Alone with the midnight sun, I sit down and make my music of the night.

Mostly, though, I make music with other Poleys. We play all kinds of music. And we are of all different abilities. No one is judged here. Anyone can play. We play because we enjoy playing, we don’t play to sound good. That doesn’t matter, but invariably we don’t sound bad at all.

Victoria plays many instruments, but lately she has been perfecting the saxophone. One night a group of us sat around jamming in the Skylab Lounge. Victoria was playing the lead on sax. We were very much into the music. All of a sudden Victoria stopped. We all looked up. She looked around.

"We’re at the South Pole!" she said finally.

Yes, it was an obvious statement, but we had forgot. We were all so caught up in the music and the moment. "Wow!" I thought to myself, and a rush of pure excitement and happiness filled me. It was one of those rare moments in life where everything seems perfect.