Today’s podcast and original music are all about misdirection, public attention, and mega-distraction—and the intentional manipulations of all three. Thanks so much for listening, Michael (Noise #203 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2026 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.) Get full access to Current Dissonance at www.currentdissonance.com/subscribe (https://www.currentdissonance.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

AMERICAN GRACE, a novel and original music by Michael Gallant PROLOGUE Adelaide stood five stories above Harlem. She watched as light emanating from a lone streetlamp shattered through the curved glass of her binoculars and quieted into pinpoint darkness, the ambient glow rising like steam from asphalt to power lines to clouds. During these moments—with blackened coffee warming her hands, the night’s darkness bleeding out towards dawn, watching her Northern Lights a thousand miles south—Adelaide’s weighted frame felt featherlike. A curved finger of breeze could summon her to the next rooftop and adventure. But this morning of ice and daydreams was different. Down there where vision became fuzz, something twisted. A cockroach, perhaps, but large and metal and rolling, crawled from 109th Street to Adam Clayton Powell Avenue, fell eclipsed by trees and a bus, then squeezed, scuttled through to 110th And on every corner where the beast froze, whether to sniff for a morsel or track a predator, it shat out a person. Though Adelaide was away and above, she saw what was important, that each human moved stiffly, like an action figure—and also like an action figure, limbs were painted in army fatigues and shoulders mounted with tubes that could explode in one direction or another and really, truly hurt. Like other shrunken dolls that painted rules and expectations onto the eaves of children’s imaginations, each human had been crowned with a tiara, a dainty trifle that drank in and sprayed out the early morning sunlight as copper shards in Adelaide’s magnified gaze. And from swollen chests and even broader shoulders, each human wore a ballgown sewn for prom or fairy tale, or bedroom fantasies thereof. A short-circuited or highly progressive factory line, Adelaide though. One manifested in blood, bone, suppression. “Oh hell.” Her binoculars peeled away from her eyes, yet her gaze stayed distant, drinking in a syrup of orange sky and ghosts, those sentinels in satin, canvas, and steel. This was new and very much not good, so it screamed to be shared. Clearly, Jericho needed to know, right now, that the dirt and brilliance of Harlem had new parasites. His squeaky appendage—Adelaide’s own fault from the beginning—probably should know, too. “Amazing Grace, how sweet the sound, please save a wretch like me.” Adelaide looked to the sky as the growing sun sliced a sheet of yellow across her and the rooftop. It ignited the brick and moss, grill and beer bottles, from sleeping shadow into a sloppy, sizzling blaze. For a second, Adelaide was still in its frigid brilliance. She imagined herself a rock equal distance from two burning, winter shores. Those half-sung tendrils of “Amazing Grace,” the earth-worn melody that danced awkwardly on her lips, was the weight pressing her down, securing her in sand, against the swell that coaxed her, strongly now, towards an ocean’s unbounded rage. The wind slapped Adelaide from her reverie. She turned to the stairs and whispered a quiet "thank you" to the living air, still frozen but glowing around her now, its warmer face to welcome her soon within. ——— Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Today’s podcast and original music are all about the recent Scientific American article: Can Digital Ghosts Help Us Heal? (https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/can-ai-griefbots-help-us-heal/) Thanks so much for listening, Michael (Noise #202 by Michael Gallant. Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.) Get full access to Current Dissonance at www.currentdissonance.com/subscribe (https://www.currentdissonance.com/subscribe?utm_medium=podcast&utm_campaign=CTA_4)

Subscribe to the Current Dissonance newsletter at currentdissonance.com ABOUT CURRENT DISSONANCE Current Dissonance takes current events out of our eyes and into our ears. Whenever I can, I compose and record a new piece of music in reaction to a headline in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Asahi Shimbun, The Times of India, The Australian, or other news outlets from around the world, and share it with you via this newsletter. It gives me peace and clarity to do this—and I hope it can bring the same for you. Many thanks for reading, listening, and sharing the noise, Michael Gallant https://CurrentDissonance.Substack.com #solopiano #improvisation #pianoimprovisation ---- Noise #201 by Michael Gallant. Written and recorded for Current Dissonance (currentdissonance.com). Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.

Subscribe to the Current Dissonance newsletter at currentdissonance.com ABOUT CURRENT DISSONANCE Current Dissonance takes current events out of our eyes and into our ears. Whenever I can, I compose and record a new piece of music in reaction to a headline in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Asahi Shimbun, The Times of India, The Australian, or other news outlets from around the world, and share it with you via this newsletter. It gives me peace and clarity to do this—and I hope it can bring the same for you. Many thanks for reading, listening, and sharing the noise, Michael Gallant https://CurrentDissonance.Substack.com #solopiano #improvisation #pianoimprovisation ---- Noise #200 by Michael Gallant. Written and recorded for Current Dissonance (currentdissonance.com). Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.

After three months of Current Dissonance silence, I’m thrilled to be back with a new Noise. Thanks so much for being here. I recorded Noise #199 as a reaction to the murky storytelling around America’s bombing of Iranian nuclear facilities—specifically how obliterated (or not) the program has become. Running through my head as I recorded the music was a recurring downward arc, like bombs dropping through cloud and air and earth—or like political mouths racing to the rhetorical bottom as they try to carve their chosen narrative into the face of public consciousness. There’s a lot of swirling energy and dark dissonance in the music, but also glimmers of harmonic brightness and hope—because the true aftermath remains undefined. I’d love to hear *your* reactions to *my* musical reactions to current events, so please don’t hesitate to leave a comment. And I’d be honored for you to share the music if it moves you: Subscribe to the Current Dissonance newsletter at currentdissonance.com ABOUT CURRENT DISSONANCE Current Dissonance takes current events out of our eyes and into our ears. Whenever I can, I compose and record a new piece of music in reaction to a headline in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Asahi Shimbun, The Times of India, The Australian, or other news outlets from around the world, and share it with you via this newsletter. It gives me peace and clarity to do this—and I hope it can bring the same for you. Many thanks for reading, listening, and sharing the noise, Michael Gallant https://CurrentDissonance.Substack.com #solopiano #improvisation #pianoimprovisation ---- Noise #199 by Michael Gallant. Written and recorded for Current Dissonance (currentdissonance.com). Copyright 2025 Gallant Music LLC. All Rights Reserved.