by Quincy Saul,
September 23, 2017
Outside the window
the world was bleak and in her mind it felt even bleaker, on the
afternoon Aranya took out her horn, slowly and without enthusiasm,
from its drab fake leather case. She went through the motions of
practicing, while in her mind going through other motions; disgust at
the human world for not living up to the beauty of nature, neatly
congruent with resentment of herself for going through the motions of
her art – for doing exactly what most disgusted her, even in her
most exalted pursuits. This pattern was everywhere and seemed almost
impossible to break.
Whether reading or
playing something memorized or improvising, she was in a different
place than her notes. She barely heard herself; her thoughts were on
fascism and extinction, or on friends and family, on frivolities or
on fate, while the music she created was in another dimension
entirely – independent, autonomous. This was the discipline, this
was the routine. This was the only way she knew, but today more than
ever it felt excruciating – to practice like a machine and a
militant, while in pursuit of that opposite thing; that sublime
peace, that inspired bliss. The more she forced herself to keep
playing, even while uninspired, the more she felt like a fraud and a
failure. Whatever she executed well enough, was eclipsed completely
by that horizon of genius which laughed at her meager discipline and
scowled at her overbearing mediocrity. Nonetheless! Arpeggios, long
tones, patterns, more long tones, and she wanted to cry but she kept
going, because despite the pitiful cosmic drama in her head she had
only been practicing for fifteen or twenty minutes...
… and the world
was burning and the empire was falling, and she wondered as she
looked out her bleak window at a bleak world what made her any
different from Nero, or the other decadents she detested, whose art
for art's sake was so horribly out of tune with Mother Earth's song
and dropped every beat on Father Time's calendar? Aranya had no
answers so she kept practicing. Like music was a mountain she plodded
upwards, and the summit could never be seen, only dreamed about; and
you might climb for years only to stay in the same place; and
although the peak pointed to unity and fellowship, the path up was
walked in a vast interior anonymity.
But as the bleak
day continued outside, all of a sudden, something brilliant came
about, somewhere between Aranya and her instrument. She had been
improvising soullessly – but then there was a change – something
came over her or into her or out of her – something beautiful and
unexpected – and yet which seemed to emerge seamlessly from her
previous phrases, redeeming them; making previous mistakes into
majestic parts of a commencing whole... Without sense of time or
place she continued to play, in a kind of elevated and distant awe of
herself – not letting her consciousness get too close for fear of
disrupting the flow – as a melody emerged which sounded like it had
passed through a membrane from another world... She took a breath and
repeated it, and then embellished upon it; something from beyond her
own imagination. And –
BANG!
There was a silver flash and
roaring thunderclap and the bleak world stood still. And then a tiny
blue winged man with a flute was standing on her windowsill, saying
“Take my hand, now!” Aranya
took his hand, and with her horn in the other, they disappeared from
the bleak world with another silver flash BANG!
“Welcome
Aranya!” said the little blue man. Suddenly they were soaring
through what seemed to be a wormhole of sound; a fractal tunnel of
vibrations which telescoped forwards and backwards, yet seeming to
surge with motion, impossibly, in all directions simultaneously. She
was having a difficult time distinguishing between sight and sound.
“And
congratulations,” he continued, “Very few of your species are
recruited. But we heard your sound, and I was sent immediately.”
Aranya was totally
discomposed, struggling for her senses, and holding onto her horn
like her life depended on it; for it was the only part of her life
that hadn't suddenly disappeared... After a pause Aranya spoke. “You
heard me practicing and you came from outer space to get me?”
“We heard your
sound,” the creature repeated. “All sound is simultaneous, you
see! You can hear all of it from anywhere, anytime, if you know how
to tune in. We call it 'your sound,' because it can't be reduced to
components of time, pitch, timbre, or anything. But you can think of
it like a password, or a signal. If you play it just right, we
notice. And when it's especially right, then we recruit you.” He
smiled.
“What are you?
Where are we? Where are we going?” Aranya asked, looking as if for
the first time at this azure humanoid who held her hand and held his
flute in the other like a sail in the winds of sound which swept over
them.
“An earthling
friend once called me Salazar, one of those few who we recruited.
Your people called him Bird, and they were right. Far more birds than
humans are recruited from your planet. I'm from a planet in the same
spiral arm of the galaxy as your solar system, and right now we're
traveling in a tunnel through soundspace. It allows us to travel
through space and time simultaneously. It's way faster than light,
but it goes back in time just as fast as it moves forward through
space, so there are no causality violations and nobody gets hurt.
We're on our way to headquarters. Think of it like a cosmic concert
hall in soundspace where we get together and jam to save the
universe.”
“Save the
universe from what?” asked Aranya.
“From bad music, of course!
Welcome to the orchestra. The Cosmic Congress of Composers, the Improvising Intergalactic, the Universal Orchestra, the Guardians of Galactic Harmony, the Big Bang Big Band! We've got lots of names, but they all miss the point because it's beyond representation, you know. When the cosmos falls on
hard times, they call us in to sanctify. Mostly the universe takes care of itself, but when the whole galaxy gets the blues, then we call in the best... There's a lot of bad music
out there, sister – bad vibrations. If we don't balance the score,
if we don't keep the harmony, then it's all over. Without the music,
the spheres stop! We keep the worlds turning. And we keep them swinging!
“You see the
balance between entropy and negentropy is a battle of the bands. Musicians are on the front lines all the time! Everything makes
music; rocks and trees and hydrogen atoms, and they tend to balance
out. But more complex organisms come along with their complex sounds,
and whole solar systems start skipping beats. Mostly they're saved by
the less complex organisms – I once heard a chickadee from your
planet single-wingedly resolve the dissonances of a supernova. But
when creatures like you and me evolve infinite capacities for
dreadful vibes and catastrophic music, then it becomes necessary to
call in complex counterparts from other parts of the cosmos to set
the record straight. If we didn't play our hearts out, the galaxy
would have spun off its rocker long ago from the sounds which have
come out of your planet alone! And it's not even the worst one,
arguably.”
“Back up for a
minute,” Aranya laughed, still not believing any of this. “So
you're telling me that because I accidentally played some secret
melody I've been kidnapped across the cosmos to join a band?”
“Not a melody,”
he corrected, "your sound is a
state of being, a dynamic state of being, which has technical,
emotional, social, physical and metaphysical dimensions, expressed as
an absolutely unique matrix of vibrations. It's not just about the
notes, and it's not about complexity. Remember, more birds than
humans are recruited. But whatever it is, you got it! Your sound was
beautiful by the way. It's good to meet you and I'm glad you're here.
There aren't many like us in the orchestra. Your species and mine
seem to be in a weird evolutionary limbo on the musical continuum; a
middle zone between creatures like your birds, with the simplest and
purest sounds, and life forms so evolved and ancient that they are
one with music on a molecular level... They're the bandleaders.
Creatures like them built these tunnels, and taught us to travel
them. They communicate with music, their diet is music... their sound
is a music of such complexity that it'll drive you mad with love and
joy and sadness to hear it. They're the ones who call these sessions.
They're always tuned into the cosmos, and when they hear the right
sound for the band, they send someone like me to recruit the musician
from whatever woodshed in the galaxy they're hiding out in.”
“But I suck.”
Aranya wasn't being modest, she was insisting. It was becoming
increasingly difficult to disbelieve all the evidence of her senses,
and she felt a sudden sense of dread that they had picked the wrong
person and that she would let the cosmos down.
“I felt the same
way when I was first called,” Salazar comforted her. “But
remember, birds are in the band! Insects too. It's not about your
technique, it's about how your technique is devoted to the cosmic
source. It's about a particularly beautiful fight that you have in your heart.
The universe needs it to balance out some other particularly ugly
music which the birds and the bees alone can't handle. You were
chosen because you've got what it takes to negate. It's not about
drowning out the ugliness; it's about making the world sound
beautiful all over again. You've got the antidote to entropy sister!”
“But...”
Aranya struggled, “who decides what music is bad?”
“You
do, sister, or you wouldn't be here. You took sides long ago; you
took sides with nature. Music is nature, and nature has laws. Nobody
has to decide about bad music any more than they have to decide about
bad genes. Music is democratic, but has hierarchies. Just like
nature. Bad music is like a disease or a parasite; it's all part of
the ecosystem and even keeps good music healthy. But if you let it go
unchecked, it'll kill you! Another horn player from your planet
called Coltrane said it: “there
are bad forces, forces that bring suffering to others and misery to
the world, but I want to be the opposite force. I want to be the
force which is truly for good.” And he knew how to get there, he
knew how to take sides. “The
musician's calling,” he said, “is to get close to the sources of
nature.”
It's about communion with natural laws. It's about evolution –
biological and cosmological! In the beginning was the sound! And the
sound was good, still is good. But we have to keep the good music
alive, sister.”
“My name means
wilderness,” murmured Aranya to herself, trailing one hand in the
rippling waves of sound that were the moving walls of the tunnel, the
other hand raising her horn above her head, where it caught and
carried her until she was eye to eye with the little blue man.
“And mine means
an old house,” Salazar replied: “A place to practice, to hone my
art to perfection, so I will be ready when the cosmos calls. We are
different species from different planets and we have different names,
Aranya, but as they say, music is the universal language.”
***
And soon they
arrived at the cosmic crossroads, and they joined the big bang band
of birds and music gods and untold other creatures seen and unseen.
And they played their symphony and saved the universe. Salazar showed Aranya the way home through the
wormhole, and suddenly she as back in her room and the little blue
man was perched on her window exactly as he had arrived.
“Pleasure to
meet you young lady, you sounded great,” he said. “Remember, keep
practicing! The universe is counting on you.”
And then Aranya
was alone in her room. Nobody would ever believe her. But the world was burning and the empire was
falling and she looked out her bleak window at a bleak world, and she
kept practicing. She had to hone her art because the cosmos was counting on her. And in the meantime there was the battle
of the bands for planet earth.
