The Perfect Note
by Jack Woods
“How should it end?” I ask you.
“You gotta put a minor in there somewhere, it's sounding a bit too happy.”
“What do I know about contextualising notes?”
“Just play through chords until something sounds right. A note is like a word, they all sit different but there is always one waiting perfect…Perhaps G?”
“How can one note be perfect when everything is?”
“I envy you sometimes, you are in love with possibility, beauty on the other hand…it's all about intuition. Logic is the means to meaning.”
Beauty is another story, always waiting patient about phi away, we lose ourselves before the 1.6, before reaching the truth; the way. I like to think it is because we do not find beauty beautiful, that it is in infinity we hold true beauty on a pedestal, in the art of hearts as we marvel at the simplicity of creating something from nothing. From the tools at hand, for creations neither good nor bad but beyond objectivity as we work through the stream of consciousness in our attempt at rediscovering what it means to be human. Of what it means to be the only person who matters…you.
“D#-minor?”
Before critic's lay their cynical fingers on the finale, scribbling away in bleeding journals to say with vengeance, “the way you see the world is wrong,” and when we ask in all seriousness what exactly is wrong the only reply can be, “it doesn't sound right, so I'll attack everything.” Cutting a song at the hips so what could once walk alone now sits depressed and starring through the vacant window at the sunlight burning a hole through the canopy of a single tree in the distance, wondering what is wrong with our life—what have we done to deserve such a lyrical punishment of the heart? As the critic turns to the vogue God-of-the-gaps in search of praise for passing time till culture quick, and instead of waiting they force to fruition the next big thing.
Calling on the one's to speak the unspoken whim of the minds oblivious and uncaring to find the words themselves, for someone else has already done it, and if they haven't someone soon will. But why are their words better, why not spend our own lives searching for the right words—for the right way to describe those moments beyond description. We must all be our own philosophers, for who else can truly tell you what your life means, other than yourself?
“F#-minor?”
Life will never mean to me exactly what it means to you. Even if it did, we still choose different words to convey our united experience, reducing every truth to its final form as the same but different. If there is a Theory of Everything it would prove us all right; chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, all nothing more than different aspects of the same question, different means to the same end, each one right in it's own right. Although it seems pointless saying so, if something is right it simply is as the evidence proves. If it is only right under certain conditions it is not right but our ‘best guess so far,' giving us the illusion of credibility we confuse even further by dissecting each answer in these terms of moral satisfaction, depending on our beliefs, for we tend to find only what we wish to find. Because conditions can only be certain; the right note now will not be the right one later. Unless we can observe time from beyond, the latter will not suit this song.
“Db-major?”
That is why beliefs are dangerous, you are emotionally invested in the outcome rather than standing impartial in the situation catering instead to the whim of the information. We tend to only see what we choose to see, and if we think a girl is good looking, how can we possibly see her as ugly?
Linguistics. We can show how a character passing a dove resembles the coming peace when we intended it to be ironic and symbolise the end of peace. Mathematics. We can see the elegance of relativity and how the resulting equations prove the existence of wormholes when they could be nothing more than black holes with impossible measurements. Both theoretical and beyond direct observation and dogmatically existing. Everything needs context, otherwise reality would be nothing more than stardust with a spark.
Of life or beauty or whatever unknown you wish to call it, we are bound as we are unbound from its restraints, discovering laws so we may one day break them and become the deity we have prayed to for all these millennia. Because observation changes everything. Life no longer is: it must have problems to create purpose so us humans can continue to dissect existence under the shelter of our sanity. So we may further our race and share experience rather than further truth itself and remove our minds filter to fathom true beauty in all its insane glory. Realising as we look into the world we are really starring down the depths of an infinity our eyes can only comprehend at face value, following the fractal until we reach the end; our beginning.
And from distant future's both now and next we may come to realise it is us creating the big bang deep in history to eventually grow to one day observe it. Because time is actually compressed into this absurd Mandelbrot until we can only distinguish this ‘now' from every other 'now' with physical features on an abstract scale of beauty we remember into history, every present existing in concert in some twelfth dimension we can never empirically evaluate. And according to the scientific method, without empirical evidence we can never falsify a hypothesis, so our proof can never be true either.
“B-minor?”
We tend to freak out when we say truth. We must be careful with common phrases so we clarify, “my truth” so others understand, whom in turn laugh at the loner crying to the world, “death to democracy” mistaking the translation “democratic objectivity” for the least evil of political systems we have to date. They think we want anarchy—chaos but that's not it, too shallow, all we want is for people to reconsider…how can truth be true?
It is redundant. Like calling a desk a desk to describe it, define it to the end, when it comes down to nothing more than the specific conditions under which the stardust combines and compresses for the final product. Infinitely divisible and multipliable, everything is a truth in terms of something else. And if we can only understand what we experience, how can we know our efforts are futile until something tells us, “Buddy, you're looking at this all the wrong way. See? Beyond the ultraviolet light, beyond space, past time…” and we hear the meaning loud and clear; to be human is to view the universe itself in a false manner.
We may just be the dogs of some pan-dimensional civilisation unable to comprehend the true shapes of pure mathematics, and we simply do not know we are trying to fit a cube through a circular hole, for we would have no distinction of the difference between such objects.
So we may never be capable of truth and that is beautiful and okay, it is the minor I've been looking for. Sharp as we realise everything is false because human experience itself is fundamentally ‘wrong' as it were. The next note may always be wrong until we contextualise it. But what does that reveal of humanity, of me, this paper, of all these half-baked ideas?
“D-minor?”
“Take your pick, it's all wrong.”
“True.” He said, leaving the room.
“Perfect!”
“You gotta put a minor in there somewhere, it's sounding a bit too happy.”
“What do I know about contextualising notes?”
“Just play through chords until something sounds right. A note is like a word, they all sit different but there is always one waiting perfect…Perhaps G?”
“How can one note be perfect when everything is?”
“I envy you sometimes, you are in love with possibility, beauty on the other hand…it's all about intuition. Logic is the means to meaning.”
Beauty is another story, always waiting patient about phi away, we lose ourselves before the 1.6, before reaching the truth; the way. I like to think it is because we do not find beauty beautiful, that it is in infinity we hold true beauty on a pedestal, in the art of hearts as we marvel at the simplicity of creating something from nothing. From the tools at hand, for creations neither good nor bad but beyond objectivity as we work through the stream of consciousness in our attempt at rediscovering what it means to be human. Of what it means to be the only person who matters…you.
“D#-minor?”
Before critic's lay their cynical fingers on the finale, scribbling away in bleeding journals to say with vengeance, “the way you see the world is wrong,” and when we ask in all seriousness what exactly is wrong the only reply can be, “it doesn't sound right, so I'll attack everything.” Cutting a song at the hips so what could once walk alone now sits depressed and starring through the vacant window at the sunlight burning a hole through the canopy of a single tree in the distance, wondering what is wrong with our life—what have we done to deserve such a lyrical punishment of the heart? As the critic turns to the vogue God-of-the-gaps in search of praise for passing time till culture quick, and instead of waiting they force to fruition the next big thing.
Calling on the one's to speak the unspoken whim of the minds oblivious and uncaring to find the words themselves, for someone else has already done it, and if they haven't someone soon will. But why are their words better, why not spend our own lives searching for the right words—for the right way to describe those moments beyond description. We must all be our own philosophers, for who else can truly tell you what your life means, other than yourself?
“F#-minor?”
Life will never mean to me exactly what it means to you. Even if it did, we still choose different words to convey our united experience, reducing every truth to its final form as the same but different. If there is a Theory of Everything it would prove us all right; chemistry, biology, physics, psychology, all nothing more than different aspects of the same question, different means to the same end, each one right in it's own right. Although it seems pointless saying so, if something is right it simply is as the evidence proves. If it is only right under certain conditions it is not right but our ‘best guess so far,' giving us the illusion of credibility we confuse even further by dissecting each answer in these terms of moral satisfaction, depending on our beliefs, for we tend to find only what we wish to find. Because conditions can only be certain; the right note now will not be the right one later. Unless we can observe time from beyond, the latter will not suit this song.
“Db-major?”
That is why beliefs are dangerous, you are emotionally invested in the outcome rather than standing impartial in the situation catering instead to the whim of the information. We tend to only see what we choose to see, and if we think a girl is good looking, how can we possibly see her as ugly?
Linguistics. We can show how a character passing a dove resembles the coming peace when we intended it to be ironic and symbolise the end of peace. Mathematics. We can see the elegance of relativity and how the resulting equations prove the existence of wormholes when they could be nothing more than black holes with impossible measurements. Both theoretical and beyond direct observation and dogmatically existing. Everything needs context, otherwise reality would be nothing more than stardust with a spark.
Of life or beauty or whatever unknown you wish to call it, we are bound as we are unbound from its restraints, discovering laws so we may one day break them and become the deity we have prayed to for all these millennia. Because observation changes everything. Life no longer is: it must have problems to create purpose so us humans can continue to dissect existence under the shelter of our sanity. So we may further our race and share experience rather than further truth itself and remove our minds filter to fathom true beauty in all its insane glory. Realising as we look into the world we are really starring down the depths of an infinity our eyes can only comprehend at face value, following the fractal until we reach the end; our beginning.
And from distant future's both now and next we may come to realise it is us creating the big bang deep in history to eventually grow to one day observe it. Because time is actually compressed into this absurd Mandelbrot until we can only distinguish this ‘now' from every other 'now' with physical features on an abstract scale of beauty we remember into history, every present existing in concert in some twelfth dimension we can never empirically evaluate. And according to the scientific method, without empirical evidence we can never falsify a hypothesis, so our proof can never be true either.
“B-minor?”
We tend to freak out when we say truth. We must be careful with common phrases so we clarify, “my truth” so others understand, whom in turn laugh at the loner crying to the world, “death to democracy” mistaking the translation “democratic objectivity” for the least evil of political systems we have to date. They think we want anarchy—chaos but that's not it, too shallow, all we want is for people to reconsider…how can truth be true?
It is redundant. Like calling a desk a desk to describe it, define it to the end, when it comes down to nothing more than the specific conditions under which the stardust combines and compresses for the final product. Infinitely divisible and multipliable, everything is a truth in terms of something else. And if we can only understand what we experience, how can we know our efforts are futile until something tells us, “Buddy, you're looking at this all the wrong way. See? Beyond the ultraviolet light, beyond space, past time…” and we hear the meaning loud and clear; to be human is to view the universe itself in a false manner.
We may just be the dogs of some pan-dimensional civilisation unable to comprehend the true shapes of pure mathematics, and we simply do not know we are trying to fit a cube through a circular hole, for we would have no distinction of the difference between such objects.
So we may never be capable of truth and that is beautiful and okay, it is the minor I've been looking for. Sharp as we realise everything is false because human experience itself is fundamentally ‘wrong' as it were. The next note may always be wrong until we contextualise it. But what does that reveal of humanity, of me, this paper, of all these half-baked ideas?
“D-minor?”
“Take your pick, it's all wrong.”
“True.” He said, leaving the room.
“Perfect!”
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I REALLY like the idea of this, Mr. Woods, but there must be pleasure for the reader in the reading of the paragraphs and I found none.
I know you are attempting something dense and unsayable, but still there must be a reason for the reader to read.
(C#-minor is a surprisingly useful chord)
and I figured one serious response to a serious work is better than none, eh?
;-)
thank you, i agree, response is the key to learning.
i do apologise for breaking Vonnegut's first rule of storytelling, but the intention was for a mutual interaction of the reader and writer as an interchangeable point of view, whereby the reader becomes the writer at the end though the idea that anything is possible if nothing is wrong. And incidentally, C#-minor is the perfect compliment!
i was going for a anti-personal essay and edited in the chord changes to create reason, hoping by mooting the senses of setting and action that words which usually do not create imagery may be free to take whatever subjective form the mind may produce.
i have never been published, and i'm not the best editor, so any tips on how i can hit the note i want would be much appreciated :)