I’m
freezing, would you hurry back, and put your arm round mine, and try to stay
focused will you, don’t drift off. I need you to count each time we pass the
gate, try not to forget the number, it’s imperative that you remember the
number. We locked hands. What do you know of the philosophy of the ancients?
Nothing, well, nothing aside from fettered figures trapped in a theater of
shadows. And the idea of a circle whose center is everywhere … and …
circumference nowhere. Thank you. Yes, yes, but no. I’m thinking of Pythagoras,
you know, the mystic philosopher and mathematician. I thought they were all
mystifying, I interjected. She politely ignored me. Musica Universalis. Music of the spheres they call it, it’s a
terribly beautiful idea. On one hand, mathematically determinable melodic rests
and ratios emerge between interconnected celestial bodies, where each is an
instrument, as it were, in symphony of planets. A pseudo-religious thesis
begging for a pre-given harmony of the world. Tedious. On other hand, through
their interplay, these orbs birth a particular kind of music. The sounds are so
ubiquitous, they cannot be perceived. However, forget Pythagoras, and
concentrate on the peculiar nature of this music. In a certain romantic sense,
the idea speaks of planetary music, cosmic melodies. Now, leap with me here.
The music is conjured, conducted and played, not just by celestial bodies, but
the entire world. Everything. And the
song is so omnipresent, so condensed, that it is unheard. Silence. Absolute
sound inverts into silence. A constituting quietness. Perhaps, the quietness
that makes sound possible, despite being the result of sound? I digress. Are
you still following? So, Everything, from
the infinitesimal, to the cosmic, from excrement, to nebulae; the parts, and
sums, and so on, hold hands, or remain estranged, through an overarching
silence, a vibrating stillness. Forget, though, about sets, geometric
directions or numerical hierarchies, anything proportioned by the senses or the
sciences. Rather, it is pure the resonance of things communicated soundlessly,
the inaudible stillness of Everything in
relation to the silent sum of All. Do
you fathom the consequences? Are you counting, by the way? Yes. I lied, and
instead I observed the rays slicing in through the fence, becoming dials in the
circular clockwork of the garden. My limited perspectival point, though,
drifting along the margins of this temporary timepiece, barred me from properly
telling the time.
Desperately,
I strained to orientate the spatial presence of my body, my traitorous inert
limbs, my tilting head, by solely following the sounds in a simple vector. They
refused to heed my directives, and furiously scurried and darted in every
direction, scattering along the walls, entering a union with the cracks and
crevices which increasingly grew wider and denser, slowly consuming the
background.
