CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM (5)
By:
October 17, 2026
One in a series of enthusiastic posts, contributed by 25 HILOBROW friends and regulars, analyzing and celebrating our favorite… creators switching art forms and/or careers! Series edited by Adam McGovern.
BRIAN MAY, ASTROPHYSICIST
We tend to imagine life as a line: forward, uneven perhaps, full of pauses and detours, but, ultimately, linear. It is probably why stories of crossing fascinate us so much. They seem to confirm that growth happens through departure, that fulfillment lies somewhere beyond a bridge connecting one territory to another.
At first glance, Brian May’s life appears to fit that pattern: a young astrophysics researcher leaves academia, becomes a rock star with Queen, and three decades later completes his doctorate.
But the more deeply I looked at the story, the less it resembled a crossing and the more it resembled an orbit.
When May returned to his doctoral work, he did not begin a new journey. He returned to the same question that had occupied him in the early 1970s.
The same observations,
the same notebooks,
the same unfinished thread.
More than anything, he returned to a question that had survived long enough to find its author again.
And that orbit feels very much like a refrain.
Not because refrains repeat. Refrains return. By the time they come back, the song has already traveled elsewhere. New verses have intervened. Meanings have deepened. What returns carries the weight of everything that happened in between.
Like May’s doctorate. In 2007, it became a new orbit of the paused doctorate of 1974 —
after Queen,
after Freddie Mercury,
after stadiums,
after friendship, grief, fame, and time itself.
The question remained, but the life surrounding it had become immeasurably larger.
As for the subject itself, his thesis focuses on the Zodiacal Dust Cloud, a vast structure of interplanetary particles orbiting the Sun. From Earth, it appears stable, almost permanent. Yet permanence turns out to be the illusion, because:
particles disappear,
new particles emerge,
matter is constantly replaced.
The structure remains while the matter changes.
And then there is the dust itself. His thesis opens with Kansas’s “Dust in the Wind”, from the album Point of Know Return, and beautifully closes with a quote from Genesis: “for dust thou art, and unto dust shalt thou return.”
Between those two invocations of dust lies a rigorous study but also something unexpectedly poetic: a meditation on circulation.
Dust returns.
Orbits return.
And sometimes lives do too.
Perhaps that is what Brian May’s story quietly reveals. What appears to be a departure may simply be part of a much larger trajectory. Some questions remain in orbit around us for decades, waiting for the moment they can return.
Like a refrain returning after the song has changed.
Like dust circling through space.
Not to the same place, but around the same center of gravity, each arc carrying the whole journey within it.
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For those curious enough to follow May’s orbit all the way back to its point of origin, the thesis is available here
CROSS YOUR ENTHUSIASM: INTRODUCTION by Adam McGovern | James Scott Maloy on DAVID LEE ROTH, EMT | Lynn Peril on HEDY LAMARR AND GEORGE ANTHEIL, INVENTORS | Crockett Doob on LARS ULRICH, TENNIS ACE | Mimi Lipson on DANIEL DAY-LEWIS, COBBLER | Mariane Cara on BRIAN MAY, ASTROPHYSICIST | Carlo Rotella on CURTIS COKES, FIGHTING ACTOR | Josh Glenn on GEORGE HARRISON, FILM PRODUCER | Crystal Durant on SKUNK BAXTER, DEFENSE CONSULTANT | Adrienne Crew on HENRY ROLLINS, PUNK POLYMATH | Deborah Wassertzug on JOHN LURIE, DISRUPTOR | Heather Quinlan on HARRY NILSSON, COMPUTER GENIUS | Adam McGovern on JOSEPHINE BAKER, SPY | Douglas Wolk on RICHARD McGUIRE, GRAPHIC-LIT INNOVATOR | Jake Zucker on SYDNEY POLLACK, CHARACTER ACTOR | Rani Som on RACHEL POLLACK, SEEKER | Jeff Lewonczyk on ANDY WARHOL, FORMER ANDY WARHOL | Nikhil Singh on ADOLF HITLER, FORMER PAINTER | Holly Interlandi on ADAM JONES, DIRECTOR | Jonathan Pinchera on PETER CAINE, CONSPIRACY STAR | Miranda Mellis on EVE KOSOVSKY SEDGWICK, ACADEMIC WEAVER | Kelly Jean Fitzsimmons on BRENT SPINER, SINGING NOVELIST | Christopher-Rashee Stevenson on QUENTIN TARANTINO, CRITIC | Sangamithra Iyer on MADHUR ANAND, LITERARY ECOLOGIST | Marlon Stern Lopez on GREG GRAFFIN, HARDCORE ZOOLOGIST | Pichchenda Bao on WENDELL BERRY, FARMING POET.
JACK KIRBY PANELS | CAPTAIN KIRK SCENES | OLD-SCHOOL HIP HOP | TYPEFACES | NEW WAVE | SQUADS | PUNK | NEO-NOIR MOVIES | COMICS | SCI-FI MOVIES | SIDEKICKS | CARTOONS | TV DEATHS | COUNTRY | PROTO-PUNK | METAL | & more enthusiasms!