So, What the Hell Is the New World?

Every once in a while, somebody encounters the name The New World in the 31st Century and quite reasonably asks: “What the hell is Ray Galindo talking about?” 

The short answer is: The New World is a fictional world, but it isn't simply a fictional story.            It is a civilization, a culture, a history, a musical universe, a mythology and an ongoing creative project that has grown out of decades of songwriting and imagination. It has people, places, music, entertainment, sciences, philosophies, cultures, lifestyles, historical events and its own sense of time. And yet, exactly what kind of "fictional world" it is remains deliberately open to interpretation.    Maybe that's part of the fun.

It isn't one particular kind of imaginary place                            Human beings have been imagining other worlds for a very long time.                Some people believe in Heaven, Hell or Purgatory. Others believe in Nirvana. There are legendary places such as Atlantis, mythical realms such as Olympus, legendary kingdoms such as Camelot, and literary worlds such as Oz. Science fiction gives us places such as Krypton.                                      People respond to these places in different ways. Some believe they are real. Some believe they were once real. Some regard them as metaphors. Some regard them as stories. Some simply enjoy visiting them through literature, music, film or imagination.

The New World belongs to that long human tradition of creating worlds beyond the immediately observable one. But it has an unusual characteristic:                                                                          Nobody has to decide exactly where it is.                                                                                                  Is it Earth a thousand years in the future? Is it another dimension? Is it an alternate history?                      Is it an AI-created reality? Is it a world existing inside someone's imagination? Is it the product of a psychedelic experience being documented? Is it mythology being created in real time?                            Or is it simply a fictional universe that became sufficiently developed to feel as though it has a life of its own? The answer can be yes to any of those interpretations, depending upon how you choose to look at it.

The New World is 3026 A.D.                                                                The most important thing to understand is that The New World isn't just some vague "future."                                                                                                                                     It has a specific historical framework.                                          The current year is 3026 A.D.                                                                                                      The Great Devastation occurred in the late 21st century, followed by a thousand-year period known as the Long Dusk. Civilization eventually emerged on the other side of that enormous historical rupture.      By 3025, The New World had become an extraordinarily busy place.                                      New people appeared. New artists emerged. New music was made. New places and institutions developed. Events happened constantly. The world seemed to be introducing itself almost every day.

Then came 3026.

And something changed. Not the world itself. The pace.

3026 isn't the beginning of The New World.                                      It's civilization after the beginning.

By 3026, the New World has accumulated a past. The books already exist. The recordings already exist. The historical documents already exist. The sciences have been established. The philosophies have developed. The cultures have their own identities. People have established lifestyles and traditions.There are artists who were already making music in 3025 and are now making new music in 3026. New artists appear. New songs are released. New music venues open.                                              In other words, people are no longer constantly inventing the civilization. They're living in it.              That's an important distinction.

Imagine walking into a city that has just been founded versus walking into that same city a thousand years later. In the first version, everything is an event. In the second, people have breakfast. They go to work. They argue about philosophy They listen to records,  go to concerts,  write books. open businesses, make art.

They complain about things. They fall in love.                                                                                              They make terrible decisions. They make wonderful discoveries.                                                            And somebody, somewhere, is probably making an absolutely ridiculous record.                                 That is what makes 3026 feel more settled. The New World has stopped having to prove that it exists.

The music is a particularly important part of it

Music isn't merely a soundtrack attached to The New World.                                                                    Music is one of the ways the world reveals itself.                                                                            Artists have careers. Records have histories. Songs exist within particular periods. Venues develop. Musical styles evolve. Older artists continue producing work while new artists emerge. Some of these artists are connected to the broader mythology of The New World, while others simply exist within its culture.

That means the music can function almost like historical evidence.                                                           A song made in 3025 is something that happened in 3025. A song made in 3026 belongs to 3026.         A performer who releases a second album has a history that began with the first one. A venue that opens in 3026 becomes part of the cultural landscape. The world therefore develops musical archaeology.  And that is one of the things that makes The New World different from simply writing a story about the future.

The strange part: it keeps growing.                                                The New World wasn't constructed like a conventional encyclopedia in which every page was planned in advance. It grew organically.

Characters, artists, places, songs, ideas and institutions generated other characters, artists, places, songs, ideas and institutions.                                                                                                                                One thing leads to another.                                                                                                                            A song produces a character. A character produces a band. The band produces a record. The record becomes part of the history of a musical scene. That scene requires venues. The venues become part of a city. The city acquires a culture. The culture produces more artists. And suddenly something that began as a piece of music has acquired geography, history and sociology. That's how The New World has developed.

So is Ray making all this up?                                                          Well...                                                                                                                                          Yes.

But that's not quite the interesting part. Every mythology was made up by somebody. Every novel was written by somebody. Every fictional universe began in someone's imagination. The interesting question isn't necessarily whether The New World is "real." The interesting question is what kind of reality a fictional world can acquire once enough history, detail and creative material accumulate around it.

Oz isn't a physical location that can be reached by taking the PATH train. Camelot isn't listed on Google Maps. Nobody has booked a weekend getaway to Olympus. Yet these places became culturally real enough that millions of people know who lives there, what happened there and what those places mean. The New World is doing something similar. The difference is that we're watching one of those worlds develop in real time.

And perhaps Ray isn't creating it so much as documenting it

This is where things get particularly interesting.                                                                                      One way of looking at The New World is to say that Ray Galindo invented it. Another is to say that Ray Galindo discovered a creative space and began documenting what he found there. Neither interpretation has to be settled. The songs, characters, places and ideas provide the raw material. Once they exist, they begin interacting with one another. The world develops internal relationships and continuity. Eventually the creator can encounter his own creation and discover that it has consequences he hadn't originally anticipated. That's one of the peculiar pleasures of building a fictional universe. You put something into the world. Then the world starts giving things back.

So what is The New World?

Perhaps the simplest explanation is this:                                                                                                  The New World is a fictional civilization set in 3026 A.D., developed through Ray Galindo's music, characters, stories, ideas and continuing creative work. It has its own history, culture, music, entertainment, sciences, philosophies, places and people. But that definition doesn't quite capture the strange part.

The New World isn't intended to be merely a place where stories happen. The New World is the story.

Its history is part of the story. Its music is part of the story. Its culture is part of the story. Its people are part of the story. Even the ordinary things are part of the story. And because the world continues to develop, there isn't necessarily a final page waiting at the end.

3025 was extraordinarily busy. 3026 is more settled. Perhaps 3027 will be different again.

And somewhere in that future, somebody who has never heard of Ray Galindo may pick up a book, listen to a record, walk into a music venue or watch a television program and have absolutely no idea that, somewhere back in 2026, one guy sitting in New Jersey was asking:

“What the hell am I building here?” The answer may be: A world.                                                    Not necessarily another universe.                                                                                                              Not necessarily another dimension.                                                                                                            Not necessarily a vision of the future.                                                                                                        Not necessarily a hallucination.                                                                                                                    Not necessarily a metaphor.                                                                                                                        Just The New World.

And whether you believe it exists, want to believe it exists, don't believe it exists, or have absolutely no idea what to believe...you can still take a trip there.