Month: April 2019

Vital energy measurement for the masses

In Chinese, it’s called ch’i (or qi). In Japanese, it’s ki. Variously translated using terms like “vital force” and “internal energy,” it is the name for a type of invisible power that purportedly circulates through the human body. It can be stimulated through acupuncture or ch’i kung (qigong) exercises, blocked by bad posture, enhanced with a proper diet, and depleted by stress, illness, and negative emotions. You can’t see it, nor is it visible indirectly to the tools of modern medical science, but many people consider it every bit as real as air or blood.

I’ve been aware of this concept for many years, and it’s mentioned at least a few times in every t’ai chi class I take. Although my teacher may talk about ch’i as though it’s tangible, I’ve long thought of it as a metaphorical way of discussing a bundle of abstract concepts—a useful fiction, in other words, just like “spirit” or “love” or “peace.” No one claims to be able to locate someone’s spirit physically within the body, but it’s nevertheless a handy word for talking about certain notions that are not quite covered by more mundane terms such as “brain” or even “mind.”

The Ch’i Tricorder

Imagine my surprise and bewilderment, then, when at a t’ai chi retreat some years ago, the instructor pulled out a small, strange-looking plastic box with blinking LEDs and told us, matter-of-factly, that it was a device that measures ch’i. On the top of the box was a gearlike wheel, giving the device the overall look of a miniature, high-tech phonograph. Supposedly, when you bring your hand near the device, this wheel spins faster or slower depending on the amount of ch’i you have. It’s called an Egely Wheel, and for a mere US$189, you too can have your very own.

During a break, I tried the machine out myself. I tried holding each of my hands in turn near the device, but the wheel did not spin. I tried concentrating, mentally directing energy at the device…still nothing. Then I tried relaxing and casually intending the wheel to move. Again, nothing. Various other people tried it too—sometimes the wheel moved, sometimes it didn’t, even for the same person. But no one appeared to be able to spin the wheel very fast, regardless of their apparent proficiency in t’ai chi. One explanation, of course, is that our ch’i wasn’t very strong. The more tempting explanation is that the device doesn’t actually measure anything.

The Spin Doctor

The Egely wheel is the brainchild of Hungarian scientist Dr. George Egely. According to Egely, he discovered that small objects (such as a small strip of foil) floating in a bowl of water rotated when someone’s hand was held nearby. He initially attributed this effect to heat radiated from the bodies or small air currents generated by breathing, but found that even when shielded from heat or wind, the floating strip exhibited the same effect. His conclusion was that some other, previously unmeasurable energy was causing the motion—namely, ch’i. Egely realized that because the effect was so subtle, it could only be shown by something with extremely low friction, so he developed what he calls a Vitality Meter based on a very lightweight wheel with a specially designed low-friction pivot. As for the electronics, those are used to provide a visual and/or audio indication of the wheel’s speed; if you actually look inside the case you’ll see that there’s no motor—in fact nothing connecting physically to the wheel at all. (Indeed, there’s a non-electronic version of the same device with just the wheel, called a Vitality Indicator, for a mere $49.)

Now, supposing for the moment that this principle really does represent a display of ch’i, it’s not at all apparent to me how a $189 (or $49) gadget is better than a strip of foil floating in a bowl of water. Money aside, though, I can’t say I’m convinced that such motion—to the extent that it does occur with subjects who are obviously more talented than I am—isn’t caused by something quite simple. If not heat or air currents, my guess is that the wheel is responding to vibration. Because it has such low friction, even a tiny amount of vibration (from someone walking nearby, say), could conceivably cause it to move. Any number of devices, from self-winding watches to perpetual-motion machine wannabes, are simply clever machines that convert lateral or vertical vibration into rotation. Quite plausibly, even a vibration too weak to be felt by a person could produce motion in a wheel; nothing mysterious there.

When you get right down to it, I can no more prove that ch’i isn’t moving the wheel than that there’s no such thing as a unicorn. But I really don’t buy it. (And I’m not the only one to regard this claim with some suspicion.) Even if ch’i truly does exist in a non-metaphorical form, I have no particular reason to expect it would cause an object nearby to rotate. On the other hand, if I needed some way of assessing my mental or physical health other than introspection, there are any number of gadgets I could buy for that same $189 that would tell me things I find genuinely useful, such as my body temperature, blood pressure, skin resistance, or brainwave activity. And saving money definitely enhances my ch’i.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on October 8, 2004.

Image credit: Photo courtesy of Aimslab LTD. Used by permission.

Serious pop from the other Dave Stewart

In 1985 I was attending college in New York, and in the great tradition of young people wasting the best years of their lives “experimenting,” I developed an addiction—to synthesizers. I bought what was to be the first of many keyboards and spent countless hours tweaking sounds when ordinary people my age were busy getting drunk and forming bad social habits. I wasn’t much interested in writing songs; what fascinated me most was the process of creating interesting timbres.

I subscribed to Keyboard Magazine, which encouraged my habit in two different ways. First, each issue convinced me that I absolutely needed the latest electronic musical gadgets, thus ensuring a state of perpetual credit card debt. But the magazine also taught me a number of practical skills for making music. One of the magazine’s features at that time was called a Soundpage—a tear-out “Flexidisc” plastic phonograph record. Each month, some well-known keyboard player would put together a special recording, along with an article describing the music and the techniques used to create it.

These Are the Daves I Know

Dave Stewart was the featured artist in the December 1985 issue. The Soundpage article began: “Dave Stewart insists that the other Dave Stewart, co-founding member of the Eurythmics, is not related to him, even though they’re both British, play keyboards, accompany female vocalists, and wear glasses.” (This Dave Stewart had been in the bands Egg, Hatfield & the North, and Bruford; vocalist Barbara Gaskin was once in Spirogyra.) I listened to the recording of “Henry and James” and was instantly hooked. Though the style could be called “synth-pop,” I had never heard music like this. The instrumentation was entirely electronic, but the sounds had been crafted with such skill and care that you could easily forget that fact. In contrast to the prevailing custom, synthesizers were used to maximum musical effect, not to call attention to the fact that the artist was using the latest gear. Meanwhile, Barbara Gaskin’s vocals were hauntingly beautiful, utterly obscuring the song’s rather odd subject matter: two dronelike office workers. I played the single until it was nearly worn out.

Naturally, I had to have more. But their first album, Up From the Dark, was available only on CD. I didn’t have a CD player at the time or even know anyone who did, but I decided I’d buy the CD anyway and figure out how to play it later. I looked in record stores for the next five years and simply couldn’t find it anywhere. Once a store said they’d special-order the CD for me, but it never arrived. I wondered if I would ever hear more of Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin.

Then, in 1990, I casually mentioned Up From the Dark to a friend of mine in Texas. “Oh yeah, I have that,” he said. “It has the ‘Siamese Cat Song’ on it; I bought it for my kids.” I was flabbergasted: my quest had ended. After listening to a cassette copy for a few months, I finally tracked down the CD in a used record store. Shortly thereafter, Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin released another album, The Big Idea, followed by Spin in 1991.

Extended Coverage

The music on those three albums is quite diverse. Many of the songs are extremely inventive covers—including such strange bedfellows as “Subterranean Homesick Blues” (Bob Dylan), “Amelia” (Joni Mitchell), and “Leipzig” (Thomas Dolby). It was also on Stewart & Gaskin CDs that I first heard “8 Miles High,” “Walking the Dog,” and “It’s My Party,” their version of which became a #1 hit in the U.K. But Stewart’s original compositions, like “Henry and James,” “The Cloths of Heaven” (based on a poem by Yeats), and “Golden Rain,” are my favorites. Although the styles of music vary, the masterful orchestrations, clever interpretations, and luscious vocals give it all a distinctive coherence.

Stewart & Gaskin refer to their work as “pop music for grown-ups.” That’s a terrifically apt description. The songs’ subject matter is sometimes serious and sometimes silly, but it never degenerates into the meaninglessness of most commercial pop music. The duo’s unique mixture of intelligent lyrics and interesting music results in a distinctive style. I think of it as the musical equivalent of gourmet macaroni and cheese: familiar and comforting, yet rich and sophisticated—skillfully made with quality ingredients and adorned with subtle garnishes. The songs tend to have the overall structure, rhythm, and length of pop songs, but an entirely different texture, if you will—one that especially appeals to people who appreciate technical excellence in musical composition, performance, and yes, synthesizer programming.

What Goes Around

After the major labels dismissed Stewart & Gaskin’s music as “too uncommercial,” they started their own label, Broken Records. The lack of commercial pressure allows them an unusual level of artistic integrity and creative freedom. But apart from the occasional odd remix, re-release of a CD single, or compilation album the duo produced no new music for many years after 1991. Every now and then I’d check in on their website, which perpetually promised that a new album was in the works, but after 18 years, I’d pretty much given up hope.

And then, in 2009, much to my surprise and delight, that long-promised album, Green and Blue, finally appeared. In fact, because Stewart & Gaskin had accumulated more new music than would fit on a single CD, they simultaneously released a five-track EP called Hour Moon with the remaining songs (including the Soundpage version of “Henry and James” I’d fallen in love with back in 1985), followed several months later by the 14-track The TLG Collection, featuring rare and unreleased tracks. The following year, they released two new Special Edition CDs: Broken Records: The Singles and As Far As Dreams Can Go, both of which include reworked and extended versions of earlier tracks. The following year, two more Special Edition CDs appeared—updated versions of The Big Idea and Spin.

Apparently Stewart & Gaskin felt that collection of music should be enough to last fans for quite a while, because more than seven additional years would pass before their next offering. In January 2019, the duo released another full-length studio album, Star Clocks. The sound is just what I’ve come to expect from Stewart & Gaskin, including occasional lyrical and musical callbacks to their earlier hits. But as an example of how thoroughly they’ve rejected commercial pop expectations, the average song length on this 11-track album is a full seven minutes.

My one fond wish, which will probably never come true, would be to see a live performance by Dave Stewart & Barbara Gaskin. The duo rarely tours—I’ve found records of a handful of concerts over the years in the U.K. and in Japan, as well as one in Los Angeles back in 1991. But that’s about it. Furthermore, Stewart & Gaskin apparently have a philosophical objection to releasing video recordings of their concerts, so I may not even get a second-hand impression of what their live performances are like. On the other hand, Stewart says that they have no plans to retire and expect to keep making new music for years to come. I sure hope so.

Note: This is an updated version of an article that originally appeared on Interesting Thing of the Day on April 19, 2003, and again in a slightly revised form on March 18, 2005.

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