Souvenirs

The chatter of the coffeeshop against the rain falling outside was a welcome change to the dreadful silence that filled his home.  A ceramic tile used to lay above the kitchen sink, and on it was a simple sketch in muted colors of a tiny house.  Beneath it, the caption read, "Home is where the heart is." For him, it used to be the house on Honeysuckle, and before that, NE 113th St.  But where is it now?

"Home is where the heart is."

The truth is it lives in the past, in happier and stabler times free from the burdens of "the real world," and it lives in the beautiful realm of possibility that never came to be in his particular strand of reality.  So he wanders alone in search of that that never was.

* * *

幸福

For the new year, I would like to jump out of my shadow, overcome Fear, and stumble upon (or into) Truth and Love.  And regardless if the world should come to an end by the end of the year, I'd like to find myself with someone with whom I could share all that I have and all that I am so that neither of us would have to burn alone.

龍山寺

He clasped his hands together and shut his eyes as his consciousness began to coalesce with the gentle chant and swirling smoke that filled the temple.  In his mind's eye, he saw his music, his family, his Lieblingsmensch... and by the third bow, he felt the shadow loosening its dark clutches upon his heart.  Even if he was not devout, it was comforting that someone, anyone, would listen to his burdens.

"I brought you here today so that you can see for yourself that the City isn't as glamorous as some people would like you to believe.  It's good to interact with the upper class, but it's equally important to understand the less fortunate and the impoverished."  And it was true, how could he even begin to understand the chromatic nature of humanity if he never experienced both sides of the spectrum?  Thus, he began to see the logic behind the board games, the gambling... and the thievery.  He paused to wonder, was he the product of his surroundings and conditions?  Or were his fundamental beliefs pre-existent?  Perhaps that was the beauty and fallacy of humanity, that Truth would always be perceived and filtered through the senses, that everyone's perception of Truth was destined, doomed, to be different.  The impossibility of objectivity-

"Don't listen to him too much," they told him.  But who was actually speaking?  Was it the women?  Or was it the vestiges Confucian values that had braved the test of time?

Don't smoke.

He's not going to smoke, just look at him, do you really think he's the type to do that?

There's the Shin Kong Mitsukoshi!  Do you see it?

Of course he does, by now he's probably seen it a thousand times already!  Why not show him something new, something that would give him insight into his culture?

They might not like what the man says or how he speaks, but judging his actions alone, they speak louder than any of what the women had said to him.  More and more, it became apparent that the man was able to hear and listen without him having to say a single word.   He recalled an excerpt from a poem he had read long ago:

Durch alle Töne tönet
Im bunten Erdentraum
Ein leiser Ton gezogen
Für den, der heimlich lauschet.

And so he silently pushed his ear to hear the soft peals of Truth (were they really there?) underneath the cacophony of people in discord, people reconciling personal beliefs with ancient ideals, and people patiently waiting for the ultimate End.  But no matter how hard he tried, the sun would still set and retreat behind the rainy cityscape, hiding from the yelling that poisoned the hearts of the denizens of his beloved island.  That was how he lulled himself to sleep every night, completely and utterly alone.

Organized Chaos

It's not immediately obvious, but the LH is an inversion of the RH.
The individual notes do not matter as much as the sweeping gesture.

The recurring theme of organized chaos is one that I find to be especially compelling. In the early part of the 20th century, composers began to emphasize gestures in their writing rather than the individual notes themselves.  As a result, the ear is robbed of a tonal basis, and the music presents itself in a new and foreign language.  Though the pitches seem arbitrary, the level of detail that goes into the music is incredible, even when the gestures are not immediately obvious (e.g. Webern).  So while the end result can sound chaotic, one still feels an underlying logic that separates it from random pitches randomly placed in time.

What makes the notion of organized chaos compelling is how well it marries two seemingly contradictory ideas, and how pervasive it is.  It's not difficult to find parallels in life; in the case of the performer, it is a miracle that they can achieve any consistency at all in physically playing their instrument.  The brain sends and receives electric signals to move specific muscles in a certain way, but the brain must filter out a lot of "noise" to process these signals (much like tuning a radio).  Consistency, then, depends on sending a the same signal and consistently filtering it out the same way every time; the margin of error is tremendous!  Amazingly, the consciousness is able to bypass all of this: "Hear the sound in your head and it will come out through your instrument."

On a slightly larger scale, reality itself may very well be made of organized chaos.  Of all the possible realities for any point in time, the fact that (our perceived) reality chose the particular one that it did makes it virtually impossible to replicate.  It's complex and difficult enough to recreate the exact conditions of any given moment since that moment is the result of the infinite scenarios leading up to it, which brings back the familiar tenet, "Everything is related to each other [...]"

But even amidst the complexity and chaos, humanity is still capable of finding warmth and beauty. The universe works in funny ways.

Le Somnambule

His ear lies asleep by the ocean, flooded by the sound of the waves. Désordre. In dreams, he builds castles only to be consumed by the waters in between. Ashes to ashes, and dust to dust.

La genèse du château.

"Quality!" she cries, "We work for quality!"
He stirs, but only to rest. And they murmur... requiescat in pace, requiem aeternam dona eis.
Meanwhile, he dreams of light, wie einst im Mai, im wunderschönen Monat Mai!

Barcarolle

Ce qui brûle le cœur.

"You should be burning [by the time you get here], as someone who has undergone a tremendous amount of strain... You have to feel it!"

My heart is burning, I've learned never to settle again.

Changes in dream states

Au bord de la civilisation, ou alors je me plais à penser.

The sun began to set as he reached the end of a road that took him to the edge of the sea.  It truly was the edge of civilization, for the houses were few and scarce, and landscape was left untouched by men.  The light cast extraordinary colors upon the Arctic waters.  The 90-foot waves seemed oddly peaceful, and as he glided up and down the waters, he could see tiny lights from a village in the distance through the water in extraordinarily warm shades of orange and dark blue.  The whole ocean glittered like a gem.

In the same manner that he used to maneuver the waves, he surfed the sand dunes in the middle of a desert.  There wasn't a cloud in the sky.  Coincidentally, he managed to catch the surf competition that happened to be taking place;  though he got off to a shaky start, he finished fantastically.

In the middle of a metropolis, the pedestrians that appeared became progressively more dangerous.  Things were not what they appeared to be, he knew that the pens they carried were something much more insidious.  He walked beside the violinist, everything would be fine as long as the violinist did not get hurt.  Yet despite his best efforts with an intimidating voice, a one of them still managed to cut him.

Along the boardwalk midday, one of the bro's started reprimanding him, a futile attempt to whittle at his resolve.  This one tried to use library fines to subdue him, but to no avail seeing as he had none.  "If you ever get even  a little bit of a fine..."

"Don't worry, I won't."

* * *

Happiness is a choice, and furthermore it is not mutually exclusive from progress.  Happiness is determined by perspective, and perspective is a choice.  This concept becomes painfully clear as dormant passions are called to life.

Friendship and collaboration.  Friendship versus collaboration?  Friendship as a collaboration.  Friendship is a collaboration?  Whatever the case, I can no longer follow someone who will not do the same for me.  (And thank goodness I don't have to.)

A new wind lifts the fallen leaves off the ground, and the colors of the sunset matched those of the waters from a dream state far away.

Saturday Afternoon

Café et chocolat chez le maestro.

How delightful!