Barbara Manning wrote and recorded an original song as a tribute to mathematicians like Cantor, Goedel, Hilbert, Cohen and Good Will Hunting.

lyrics

It’s hard to be the only one who knows something that’s true 
To stand alone as colleagues groan
They’ll never see as you 
Though God maybe infinity
There’s countless more in space 
Infinities of sizes, Infinities of place 

CH:
Cantor loved a good debate
His data did the talking
Ripping math almost in half
Cantor’s mind was rocking 

His notion of dimensions where numbers reign or kneel
No greater power than Naturals
No less power for Reals
Though God maybe infinity
There’s countless more in space
Infinities of sizes, Infinities of place 
CH:
Cantor loved a good debate
His data did the talking
Ripping math almost in half
Cantor’s mind was rocking 

Depressed, Cantor changed careers
He argued Bacon wrote Shakespeare
Left his lists of ordered sets
That no one cared, his one regret
Playing on his violin
A sanitorium kept him in
He knew it before anyone
He didn’t live to see it done 
CH:
Ripping math almost in half
Ripping math almost in half 
Ripping math almost in half 
Cantor’s mind was rocking

credits

roll over, bob dorough

free download and streaming at Lions With Wings bandcamp, an imprint of Earthwise Productions — Paul J Cohen was a friend of mine, a math professor at Stanford. In 1964 he solved a problem about CH that was on David Hilbert’s list of problems for the new math century. And Barbara Manning, sometimes now known as Barbara Manning Vargas, or Ms Vargas to her students, was a Matador and Heydey and Innerstate recording artists as SF Seals — that’s my headline pun. She also recorded for Earthwise and Lions With Wings an Elliot Smith cover tho not the one from “Good Will Hunting”.

Barbara Manning, partly in honor of Valentine’s Day, did three songs for Lions With Wings: the orginal song “Cantor’s Mind Was Rocking”, a cover of Elliot Smith “Twilight” and a cover of Edgar Winter “Dying to Live” — love, death, madness, what’s the difference?

I met Barbara Manning years ago, May 5, 1995 to be exact, when SF Seals played the Cubberley Sessions, my indie ’90s music series at the old Cubberley High School slash Cubberley Community Center. Soon enough we will have her play these new songs at The Mitch.