SUNDAY, 12 DECEMBER, 1999, PHILADELPHIA

Years ago in San Francisco, I used to do LSD on very rare occasions. Everyone’s got their stupid, “Oh my god that one time I was on acid I saw…” stories, and at the risk of utter redundancy, here’s mine: The night was well under way. We had all reached that “go off to your own corners and explore some inner world” portion of the evening’s agenda. You may recognize this phase from your own experiences. Melinda sat in the bathroom sink applying Scotch tape to the mirror in random patterns, then ran her fingers across the tactile oasis of mirror/tape/mirror/tape. Somebody was playing with a cheeseburger from McDonalds. My Kwiet Korner consisted of a boom box, headphones, a CD of Bach’s “Das Wohltemperierte Klavier”, and the sheet music to go along with it. It has always been a very agreeable passtime for me to listen to music while reading along with the score, being the superstar classical pianist that I am. It was a Fugue. Perhaps the first one, in C. Fuga a 4 Voci, if I’m not mistaken. The music began and I was blithely scanning along the bars with it. The notes, rests and other punctuation then began to metamorphose, wiggle around, get wavy. I thought, “Aw shit, I’m losing transmission. My eyes won’t let me read tonight. Ah well,” and I was about to shut the book when I noticed the notes were reforming. They were no longer notes on staves. The entire page had turned into a remarkably complicated mathematical sentence. It began simply (with the introduction of the first lone voice of the fugue) with… 1 = …and then started introducing variables as the other voices joined in. The voices interacted with each other, and it was apparent the effect of one on another in the logic of the equation. Some of the math I understood. Much was way over my head. This correlates with both my spotty musical training and the few math courses I couldn’t escape throughout school. I have listened and read along to this Bach book 1,ooo’s of times in the past, and there’s always something new, but on this occasion, perhaps not surprisingly (heh), the music was speaking more clearly and more urgently than ever before. It desperately wanted nothing more than to resolve itself. To get back to simplicity. To wipe out the voices, one after the other, until there was silence again. But half way through the piece, we were in too deep. There was no resolution yet. There was not enough data. So the piece went on. It had no choice but to do so. More interaction between the themes, counter-themes, sines and cosines, tangents and ornaments. A conversation, each voice suggesting ways out of this harrowing mess of a fugue. Some arguements, yes — some bickering, I suppose — mostly cooperation as each voice peeked around another corner looking for an exit — looking for a useful clue to add to the equation to fulfill its raison d’être. The voices resolved themselves. Base voice found that it had given everything it had to assist the mathematical function, and quietly died. Mid-base voice followed the cue shortly after. Again with the third. Finally voice four, thanks to the diligence of the other three voices, was near to completion of the sentence. It was simple alegebra for the last remaining voice, who had no trouble resolving the equation back on down to… = 1 It was so beautiful, man! (Sniffle.) I love you, man! You smell like patchouli. (Well? I was in California ferchrissakes! That’s what you’re supposed to do there, right?) (On the Upper Haight, no less.)