Nancy Abrams relaxes in her time off from her teaching job at UC Santa Cruz. Sentinel Photo by Bill Lovejoy

The singing scientist: Teacher searches for ‘Alien Wisdom’

By BOB FENSTER

Sentinel features editor

"For hundreds of years Newton’s laws

certainly were true

in the narrow range of experience

that was all humans knew.

Till Einstein helped us see

with the theory of relativity

that things are not as they seem."

— From "Alien Wisdom" by Nancy Abrams

Unique talent is common enough in Santa Cruz. It’s a town tradition. But Nancy Abrams is world-class unique. When I first heard her extraordinary song-stories about science, spirituality and the universe, I thought: Tom Lehrer meets Bertolt Brecht.

Then I found she describes herself as: "Joseph Campbell meets Carl Sagan, channeled by Barbra Streisand."

This singer, lawyer, congressional consultant and scientist teaches a UC Santa Cruz course (with her astrophysicist husband Joel Primack) on the mythic dimensions of the expanding universe.

She will put on a rare Santa Cruz show next Tuesday at the Louden Nelson Center. If you’ve been to every show that’s played Santa Cruz in the past year, you still haven’t heard anything like Nancy Abrams.

"Out of nowhere flew a good angel

bearing a message we presume was from on high:

‘Faustus, it is NEVER too late to repent!’

The angel said, but the angel lied."

— From "All’s Well That Ends Well"

Abrams sings about the borders of the bigger world, where scientific discovery meets the ancient wisdom of Hindu, Zen Buddhist, Christian and Jewish thinking.

She explores these elusive realms in songs that make Dylan, Cole Porter and Andrew Lloyd Webber look rather timid.

"To me the story is the key," Abrams said. "I use the music to help tell the story. I really need audiences to listen to the words. I think of it as performance art."

The CD’s title song, "Alien Wisdom," is about her meeting with an astrophysicist who is also a Catholic Archbishop.

They talk about how the Bible might apply to a race from another world, and the song’s answer is stunning.

The sardonic "All’s Well That Ends Well" retells the Faustus story to examine how scientists’ efforts to understand the workings of the universe threaten to unleash powers that will defy repentance.

Songs of love are as common as your radio. But songs of science and spirituality have the power to shake the way you think.

"A lot of people think science is just an opinion," Abrams said. "It’s not an opinion. It’s a way of approaching truth. You don’t actually get to truth, but it’s a way of approaching it."

Abrams’ performance circuit is as unusual as her songs: Although she has rarely performed in Santa Cruz during the years she’s lived here, she plays in churches and at science conferences around the world.

What do scientists think of her work?

"There are a certain number of scientists who hate the fact that I bring God into the question," Abrams said.

"They think that any mention of God and science in the same breath demeans science.

"But I find the best way to talk about cosmology is using religious language.

"If you ask cosmologists: Why are you doing what you do? they will say, I just want to know the truth about the universe.

"But most people don’t give a damn, if it has no impact on their lives. But it does have an impact, and that’s my job: to show people why it matters, and the only way I can show that is to show how it matters to me."

That mission has kept Abrams off the airwaves and out of the record stores, as no one in control of commercial music knows what to do with her songs.

"My curse and my gift is that I am tremendously drawn to those places where different fields meet," she said, "and I’m interested in the way they interact — and so by definition I don’t fit into any of them."

‘Handwriting of God’
Abrams was trained in classical piano since the age of 7 and composed an opera about the Reformation when she was in 8th grade.

After college, she toured Europe for two years with an Italian cabaret group that performed political satire in Italian, French and English.

"All the intellectuals in Europe then were communists, and I was shocked because I had grown up in an anti-communist world," she recalled.

"Some of these communists were quite wealthy and brilliant, and listening to their political discussions was eye-opening to me."

When she returned to America, Abrams went to law school, then found that "it wasn’t the right thing for me, but politically it seemed like the right thing. It was the early ’70s, and I was excited about feminism.

"But then I realized that I don’t like to fight with people."

Instead, she specialized in mediation and returned to her first love — science, mediating environmental and scientific controversies.

That led to her work in Washington, D.C., as an advisor to congress on scientific issues.

"When I saw how things were handled in Washington, writing political satire was the only way I could deal with it," she said.

She moved to Santa Cruz to marry a UCSC scientist, and is now teaching classes while writing a book about how to think about the universe.

"Nothing unusual about sacrificing boys.

They’re offered by the millions in war.

Nothing unusual in obeying gods

that command what’s been done before."

— From "Abraham Was Listening"

Abrams typically writes the lyrics to her complex songs quickly, "but it takes me forever to do the musical arrangements," she said.

In "Abraham Was Listening," she wrote the first verse to tell the traditional story, then pondered for six years the meaning of the Biblical tale of a man who refuses to sacrifice his son to God.

"I thought it was insane for Abraham to think of sacrificing his son, and it was a rediscovery of sanity not to do it," she explained.

"The oldest mysteries are the deepest," Abrams writes in "The Handwriting of God."

"Every myth of origin has flaws/When a question never dies/it’s keeping us alive/it’s coded in our genes to search for awe."

That search is certainly coded into Abrams’ song-writing talents.

You can buy her CD on the Web site: www.cdbaby.com, which specializes in unusual and independent singers, although it’s unlikely any are as unusual as she is.

Or if you see her perform next week, it may be the most interesting $3 you’ve ever spent.

Back to Nancy's site