The Republic of Tuva, a country in central Asia, first caught Feynman's attention because of his interest in stamp collecting. In the 1930's, the country, in what has been described as a "philatelic orgy," issued a number of off-the-wall stamps in odd shapes (triangles, diamonds, etc.) showing odd scenes (men on camels racing trains, men on horseback hunting with airplanes above them, etc.). In 1977, Feynman asked, "Whatever happened to Tannu Tuva?" His friend and collaborator Ralph Leighton helped turn the quest for information on Tuva into an adventure (as chronicled in Leighton's book, Tuva or Bust.)

When they looked Tuva up in the atlas, they saw that the capital was named Kyzyl. They decided that any place with a name like that must be interesting! Kyzyl-arguably a word without a vowel in it! They also soon found out that a monument near Kyzyl marked the center of Asia, and that some Tuvans sang with 2 voices-one voice usually a lower drone and the second voice a high-pitched flute-like sound, both from the same person. This information piqued their curiosity and things snowballed; they decided they had to travel to Tuva.

They found that Tannu Tuva's name had been changed when it was annexed by Russia. This, of course, meant that traveling to Tuva would involve a great deal of red tape. The Nova documentary showed interviews with Feynman in the last years of his life, telling stories and playing his bongo drums and congas with great gusto. Diagnosed with stomach cancer, Feynman died mere weeks before finally getting clearance from the Tuvan government for a visit. In the documentary, an obviously heartbroken Ralph Leighton showed the letters from Tuva, and remarked that he didn't know if he would actually make the trip, since it wouldn't be as much fun without his friend Richard.

There had been some samples of throat-singing (an odd term - a little like saying ``desktop publishing'') in the Nova episode; that Friday night at the Bluebird Cafe, my wife and I, and two friends, actually got to hear/see the phenomenon in person. It was truly remarkable. The show ended early, and being in that part of town, we decided to go to Davis-Kidde Booksellers.

While listening to Kongar-ol Ondar's voice doing the impossible, I had been reminded of some musicians I had revered since the days of my miss-spent youth: Don Van Vliet, aka Captain Beefheart, is said to possess a vocal range of seven octaves, and has been known to destroy microphones by singing into them. I could remember recordings in which his voice seemed to perform strange harmonic effects not unlike some of the sounds I'd witnessed that evening. Thinking about him made me think about one of my all-time favourite composers and guitarists, Frank Zappa. They grew up together in Lancaster, California, and through the years recorded and performed together.

At the bookstore, I found a biography of Zappa. While browsing through it, still thinking about the concert we'd just left, I happened to notice, on the shelf right in front of me, a 3-CD package titled Planet Soup, and on disc 1 of the set, a cut named ``Genghis Blues'' - by Paul Pena and Kongar-ol Ondar! I purchased the book and the CD set.

The book sharpened my appetite for information about Zappa. I wanted to find out what had happened to those people around him since his death in 1993 (three days before my birthday). I knew that there was an alt.fan.frank-zappa Usenet group; it occurred to me that there must, by now, be information posted on the Worldwide Web. So I limbered up my browser And that's where the magic really started.

Because, as those far-sighted folks at Sun Microsystems are fond of saying, the network IS the computer. A digital computer is nothing more than banks and banks of on/off switches. As the number of transistors that can be put on one chip increases, so does computer processing power. The Net is a collection of possible connections, and a connection is a switch being thrown. When you connect your desktop computer to the Internet, it becomes part of a vast computer.

So, when I connected to the Worldwide Web and performed a netsearch on Frank Zappa, I found that, since the time when I had stopped keeping track of the alt.fan.frank-zappa Usenet group, a whole community of Frank Zappa aficionados had found the Worldwide Web... and populated it.

A Web page is more than a screenful of text and pictures. It contains links to other Web pages. That's what makes ``surfing'' possible. It's a free-association machine, like browsing an encyclopaedia. I found Zappa interviews, spanning every stage of his career, discographies, pictures, interviews with people who have played with him.... I found, on a page from a European newspaper, that citizens in Lithuania had erected a public monument to Zappa, because his thinking, transmitted through his music, for them stood for freedom to think. From one Zappa page I found links to the next... and to pages that weren't about Zappa, but were about things that interested him, or things that interest the people who like his music.

And I, of course, found links to Web pages devoted to Captain Beefheart. I found out that Don Van Vliet, retired from making music, lives on a ranch in northern California and makes a respectable income from his painting and drawing. (While still in high school, he started out to be a wildlife artist.) Even though he has retired from his music, the world has not retired from listening to it and talking about it, and from talking about him. There are a lot of great stories circulating about the Captain - like the time he threw away a saxophone because it ``ran out of notes.'' Once he ordered two dozen sets of sleighbells for a recording session. When it was pointed out to him that there were only seven people at the session, and with each one holding a set of sleighbells in each hand, that still only accounted for 14 of them. When asked what they would do with the extra bells, Beefheart replied, ``We'll overdub them!'' (This story is usually told as if this were an extravagance; but when you consider that each set of bells has a slightly different tone....). I found at least three different versions of how he got the name Captain Beefheart. And I was impressed that all these people who listen to, and talk about, and draw inspiration from his music and stories about him still respect his privacy. I sent email to the author of one of the Beefheart Web pages and was rewarded with a reply, pointing me to yet more sources of information. But the reason I'm telling you this is because, on one of these pages I found a link to... The Friends of Tuva page! I could feel the circle closing.

At the Friends of Tuva Web page, I found the Tuvan flag, maps showing where tuva is located, nestled between Mongolia and Russia, and old pictures of the Tuvan countryside; I found publications... and merchandise!... I could send away for, including recordings of Tuvan throat-singing. As I was pondering these connections I wondered idly if Ralph Leighton had ever completed his journey to Tuva. Then it was that I found a front page scanned from an issue of Pravda showing Ralph Leighton... in Tuva...

It seems that Feynman and Leighton, having stirred up so much interest in Tuva and its cultural treasures, had generated a wave of recovery for Tuva's economy. Feynman, there, is a national hero. Tuva has even issued a . commemorative stamp in honor of Feynman, showing a pair of hands playing the bongos and a ``Feynman diagram'' - a shorthand that Feynman invented to visualize quantum physics interactions. (I also found a PostScript program for generating Feynman diagrams with a personal computer.)

So there I was, having traced a drunkard's walk from Richard Feynman, to Tuvan throat-singing, to Captain Beefheart, to Frank Zappa, and then from Zappa to the Web, which threw me back to Captain Beefheart... and unexpectedly back to Tuvan throat-singing and Richard Feynman.

But the wheel had not yet... quite... turned full circle.

That happened when a Tuvan discography listing landed me again on Frank Zappa's doorstep. Frank had been fond of hosting salons at his home. Here's an account of one such evening:

Excerpt from the Friends of Tuva newsletter, Spring 1993, by Jeff Dickson

On Monday afternoon I pulled up at the house of Frank Zappa. I gave up waiting out-side after half an hour, and forged in on my own without the Tuvan Throat singers, who were to be his guests.

About 20 minutes after the Tuvans arrived, a very pale Frank Zappa came into the room we were all milling around in. Present were Gail and Moon Zappa; Phil Abrams, the Amazing Bubble Man; Chris Sykes, who did the NOVA documentaries on Feynman (and a new two-part documentary on Feynman that just aired in Britain); Ralph's family; all Tuvans except for Rada, the translator (who showed up later); Darryl and Brenda Henriques, who were preparing the food; and Natasha, an expatriate Russian musician, who served as translator; and a couple of people I didn't get introduced to.

Zappa presented the Tuvans with a tape of the performances they did for him during Zappa-Tuva I, and a little "extra something." The performances were very good, and the tape (to my ignorant ears) sounded well engineered. The "extra something" turned out to be a solo track by Anatoly Kuular, to which Zappa's engineer had overdubbed some funky bass and rhythm ("using calculus!" Zappa repeated many times). It was hard to judge the Tuvan's reaction, but they were at least gracious. Ralph thought it was great. The tape (including "extra something") was released to the Tuvans free of restrictions in exchange for sampling their voices for a future Zappa work. It will be added to the growing pile of collaborations, which includes recordings with Mickey Hart as well as The Kronos Quartet. [It will be released in the spring of 1994 as part of a larger work by Frank Zappa.]

As the tape of the Tuvan-Kronos collaboration played over the speakers, we ate a nice meal which featured the chef's latest creation--Tuvan Pizza (chunks of lamb with onions as toppings). Zappa explained that in addition to sampling the Tuvans singing, he wanted to have them improvise something to a rather heavy piece of heavy metal that he had created. Natasha and I teamed up to provide Frank with a good laugh. Later, as I talked to the BBC producer about his Feynman research, Ralph came up and added some of his personal thoughts. This was on the fifth anniversary of Feynman's death.

Matt Groening (of Simpsons fame) turned up a little later. It was his 39th birthday, so we converted a half eaten chocolate log cake to a birthday cake and sang "Happy Birthday" to him, complete with throat-singing. The Tuvans followed Zappa to the studio to begin the musical experiments that Zappa wanted to try. The rest of us just mingled while The Amazing Bubble Man entertained Ian (aka Rocky the flying squirrel) with some well done bubble blowing. The cook, who is also a comedian, presented Groening with his book 100 Ways You Can Help Pave the Planet.

Later in the evening Ralph and I joined the Tuvans in Zappa's recording studio. Once known as the "Utility Muffin Research Kitchen," the name was changed to the "Baby Milk Factory" after the Gulf War. It was a very impressive set-up. The recording seemed to go well, although the improvisation experiment with Heavy Metal that Zappa was trying wasn't working to his satisfaction, so he called it off. Zappa looked very tired as he posed with the Tuvans, as I took a picture for Ondar (on his new camera).

On the way back to the main group (in the kitchen area) I returned with Ralph via Zappa's study, where Ralph and the Tuvans had been received before. Cool place--full of character. It was packed with recordings, and a whole collection of ZAPPA license plates from sates all over the USA hung on the walls.

When they were finished, the Tuvans relaxed with a post-recording beer, and Frank came up later to have a little snack. It was about 8pm, but he was totally drained of energy and went off to bed. With that we bid our hosts a good night. With the TUVA mobile in front, the TANNU mobile second, and my car in third, we snaked our way down from Zappa's house to the freeway.

The next day the Tuvans boarded a plane to Amsterdam to begin their four day journey home.

You read correctly, and, now, yes, the wheel has turned full circle, because not only was Ralph Leighton there, rubbing elbows with my childhood idol Frank Zappa (it turns out that Ralph was one of the founders of the Friends of Tuva), but so, also, was Kongar-ol Ondar, the Tuvan musical master whose appearance at the Bluebird Cafe one Friday evening weeks ago had touched off this whole chain of info-events.

I say "chain," but what I really mean is ``web''... or ``net.'' The relationships are so interwoven that it's hard to decide just where the story begins. This story is a net.