The problem with the unknown, my uncle used to say, is that you can never be sure when it has actually arrived or when you've just hit another patch of uncertainty. This coming from a man who confided to me under a soul-revoking vow of secrecy when I was probably like twelve years old that he believed that what we think of as "reality" - his air quotes - is actually a computer simulation generated by an alien intelligence and also powered by the sun. A theory that was as interesting as it was ridiculous but, like I do when I pass the quiet couple out front of the bank on a Sunday with their display rack for Watchtower Magazines, I looked the other way. For a while. Though eventually my curiosity started to turn over that stone of distinction between what I mean when I separate uncertainty from the unknown. This is the foundation for the philosophy of The Chemical Spray, and our first EP, Son of Broken Promises, Daughter of the Unpredictable Wind, was probably the purest, least palatable distillation of the ideas. But to get back to my uncles cracked theory, which quietly contains a complete disavowal of free-will as a thing by the way, it always occurred to me that the unknown is where I want to be, it's the destination, while uncertainty is the state, or maybe even the vehicle, for getting there. | image courtesy of @mahoney_artworks