Nothing from nothing leaves ... all the things?| MARK HUGHES COBB

I've borrowed Steven Wright's joke "You can't have everything. Where would you put it?" often enough to feel kinship, if not ownership-by-theft, which is a thing, according to conquering armies, graverobbers, and archaeologists.

A follow-up: Where do you put nothing?

Cosmology, according to Terry Pratchett, via novel "Lords and Ladies": "In the beginning, there was nothing, which exploded."

Douglas Adams, from "The Restaurant at the End of the Universe": "In the beginning the Universe was created. This has made a lot of people very angry and been widely regarded as a bad move."

Mark Twain, from "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn": "We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened. Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to MAKE so many. Jim said the moon could a LAID them; well, that looked kind of reasonable, so I didn’t say nothing against it, because I’ve seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done.

"We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they’d got spoiled and was hove out of the nest."

Billy Preston: "Nothin' from nothin' leaves nothin'/You gotta have somethin'/if you wanna be with me."

Aside from being the Fifth Beatle's second No. 1 hit, "Nothing from Nothing" was the first musical performance on a new-to-1975 sketch-comedy show, "NBC's Saturday Night." After cancellation of some stentorian sportsguy's show NBC bought the name "Saturday Night Live" from ABC.

Every junior high schooler's hero George Carlin hosted. We met the Killer Bees, one of those concepts "SNL" became infamous for; Andy Kaufman, in character as sorta-Latka, gesturing gawkwardly to the Mighty Mouse theme song played on a 45 rpm record player; Muppets for adults in the Land of Gorch gag, a scandalous, scatological royal family (in other words, a royal family), who prayed to the Mighty Favog, a living toilet -- Talking head? That's a way-homer -- for guidance; the chaotic ferocity of John Belushi, the gentle oddity of Gilda Radner, the intense mondo-mania of Michael O'Donoghue; and some other cats.

Preston's hit, co-written with Bruce Fisher -- they also co-wrote Preston's first No. 1, "Will It Go Round in Circles," and "You Are So Beautiful," which Joe Cocker slow-growled into our hearts-- starts with "The Minsky Pickup," probably named after Minsky's Burlesque, a vaudeville riff you've heard, whether you know it by name: "Da-da-duh-duhn-dun-dunh! Da." It starts things, in show bizz.

Also "Lords and Ladies": "There was a long-drawn-out chord that by law must precede all folk music to give bystanders time to get away."

If you're one of those under the delusion the 1985 "Clue" movie holds up, despite its sadly bereft cast flailing, frantic and scattered as if stranded at a 3:17 a.m. Waffle House, it's the bit where the Go-Gos' Jane Wiedlin shows up and sings "Da-da-duh-dunh-dun-dunh.... I. Am. Your singing telegram!," shortly before someone, rightfully, shoots.

Madeline Kahn ad-libbed this gag: "Yes. ... Yes, I did it. I killed Yvette. I hated her, SO much ... it-it, the f ... it ... flame ... flames. Flames, on the side of my face ... breathing, breath. Heaving breaths. Heaving ...." All somethings stem from nothing, wherever that might have been before it became a thing, though I do realize that's a grammatical Ouroboros.

Interestingly, Preston's other co-Fisher No. 1 rolls on puzzlers, too: "I've got a song/I ain't got no melody/I'ma gonna sing it to my friends." Maybe air quotes should fly around "friends." Why would you subject them so, Billy? Sure, they'd show for funky keyboards, gap-toothed soul voice and gravity-defying 'fro, but who hurt you?

He also posseses a story sans morals, and a dance minus steps, so he'll let music move him 'round.

What we're saying is Preston and Fisher invented the anti-hero, and freestyle dancing. But no, those things have antecedents in literature, theater, movies, and pretty much every bar, tap, inn, bistro, lounge, saloon, tavern, pub, nightclub, canteen, rathskeller, alehouse, farm house, dog house, hen house and outhouse where music lives.

Long before we invented hip-hop, my brother Scotty and I became huge fans of Hank Aaron. Talking our workaholic dad into a weekend any further from Dothan than Panama City Beach was a project, one we undertook with maps and cartoons, seats circled on an Atlanta Braves ticket brochure, Neatsfoot Oil-softened gloves (We'd studied where the most foul balls, percentage-wise, were bound to land), and hotel info. Bear in mind: pre-Internet. We did our homework, so we could run away from home and toward homers (Hank hit two that night. Enchantment rode with us).

I've never been able to read on car trips, which turned into a good thing after I became the guy who's usually driving. Instead I dodged feints -- restless brothers -- and daydreamed out the driver-side back window. Somewhere near Bremen I started pondering: What's nothing?

How can you have nothing, if naught exists to frame the concept? What could be pre-time when there's no expanse to rack non-time in? Who's noticing zero, zip, zilch? Where does nothing hang its metaphorical millinery?

When I tell you I was 9 or 10, it sounds precocious, so preface: Scotty, two years older, would come home from Mrs. Pruitt's kindergarten every weekday and teach all he'd learned. My nothingness exploded. While in early single digits I was reading dictionaries and encyclopedia, for the latter starting with M volumes because I was jealous S could stand for Superman as well as Scotty, while all I could claim alliteration with was what, Mon-el? Wimpy pseudo-Kryptonian. Thus dives into Michelangelo; magic; Mad magazine; machinations, malice and mercy; monsters; Medicis (via M. Buonarotti); Mercury; M. Twain, Max Fleischer, Maxfield Parrish, Marilyn Monroe, Muhammad Ali, Martin Luther King Jr., Peter Max.; Monty Python's Flying Circus .... What is a meta for?

Not sure about this chronology, but I think the first time-travel story I read was Twain's' "A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court," which tracks from loving Howard Pyle's Arthurian tales, a collection of which became one of my favorite Christmas presents, wrapped in royal blue. Hard to disguise a book, but valiant effort.

Alongside "How could there be nothing?" ran this burr under the saddle: While Einstein's probably right -- I'll concede -- that time remains relative to place, all that would mean is it's possible for someone traveling at astounding speeds to experience a different rate from what we slugs here on Earth would be swallowing. So flying at 99.9 percent of the speed of light, to a planet 2.5 light years away and back, anyone on board would age five years, while back here on Terra Largely Firma, 36 years would have passed. So in that sense, they'd have traveled to the future, which we're all doing, already, though maybe at different velocities.

Most time-travel stories soar backward, because duh, we know stuff that happened, and who wouldn't want to meet Cleopatra, cancel Hitler, shake Shakespeare's inky paw? Or go back and warn our younger selves about some folks, the follies of trust, and selling Apple too soon?

There's no past to travel back-toward. There's no there there, no thing home. It's what we call our eroded world, according to measurement we developed, and named "time." On the same path, math may describe our universe, but not because it defined reality; rather, we invented math for understanding. Of course it fits. That's how it was intelligently designed.

It's down to perspective. Being as we only know one set of living, writing, higher-consciousness beings in this amazing and expanding universe, it's, for now, ours. We decide where stuff goes, what to create; how to account for ourselves.

Reach Tusk Editor Mark Hughes Cobb at mark.cobb@tuscaloosanews.com, or call 205-722-0201.

This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Nothing from nothing leaves ... all the things? | MARK HUGHES COBB