Worlds Colliding at the Lab

Argonne hosts a lot of visitors. Cabinet secretaries, members of Congress, graduate students, journalists, schoolkids, foreign delegations, the occasional Nobel laureate. After more than a few years here you stop being surprised by who shows up. Earlier this week we hosted Darryl Jones, bassist for The Rolling Stones, ahead of the band’s Chicago tour stop. As best as I can recall, he was the first rock star.

Music has always been a big part of my life. I’ve been to hundreds of shows over the years, all kinds of venues, all kinds of scenes. Chicago is the right city for it. Every summer there’s Pitchfork, Riot Fest, and Lollapalooza, and I make a point of going to each when I can. I can no longer do multi-day festivals at my age, but I still pick a day as often as possible.

So when the call came in asking if I could host a VIP tour for Darryl Jones, I had to stop and ask who that was. I like the Stones, don’t get me wrong. I just had not been paying attention to who took over from Bill Wyman.

He showed up with real questions, and a lot of them. How Aurora actually works. What we run on it. Why the science matters. The tour ran long because the conversation kept going. That is the kind of tour I enjoy giving.

That night I caught the show. It was one of the best concerts I have ever seen, and given my count, that is saying something. Watching a man play to a stadium after spending the afternoon walking him through climate models is a particular kind of jolt. The thoughtful, curious person in the Aurora aisles and the bass player onstage were the same person, which is obvious in hindsight but still strange to witness.

That is what I keep coming back to. Most of the people who visit a place like Argonne come for the science, and most of the tour is a science conversation. But every once in a while a visit also brushes up against the rest of your life. The lab side of me and the music side of me had been politely ignoring each other for decades. For one afternoon, and then one very loud evening, they got to sit in the same room.