You Can Check Out Any Time You Like

One of my favorite short stories is "The Ultimate Melody" by Arthur C. Clarke, which can be found in Tales of the White Hart, if you go looking for it - which I highly recommend.

The premise is simple: There are some songs which stick in your mind, so insidiously and completely that you find yourself humming them for weeks, or even months. I myself have been known to sing Greensleeves or Girl in the shower, over and over again, because something about the songs sticks in my head in such a way that I can't get them out.

What is frightening about this, though, is that the song will, for a time, drive from your head all thoughts other than the song - it will make concentration impossible, it will leave you unable to carry on conversations or do work without being distracted. We've all experienced this, of course - when a song gets stuck so thoroughly in your head that it's all you can think of.

So why does this happen? Well, the premise espoused in the story is that the music we find compelling is just a reflection of the Ultimate Melody, a song which resonates perfectly with the human brain. Weird, maybe, but an interesting idea - and one that starts to seem more possible when you think about how songs break out, catch people's minds seemingly simultaneously and completely, and then die away again.

So what would happen if we could synthesize such a thing? All it would take is a computer running through lists of possible sounds, selecting for the combinations and melodies which humanity finds most catchy - and, given some time, the ultimate melody is within your grasp.

But of course, as ever, when reaching for the very top, mankind's hubris turns on us, and the scientist who creates the melody becomes an empty shell, his mind totally taken over by the strands and chords of the song to end all songs. After all, even a simple toon or ditty can erase thought from one's mind - the ultimate melody must have power vastly beyond such a thing.

But my question is - what would that be like? To hear the ultimate melody, and never to turn back; to give your mind over to the music of the heavens? It wouldn't be like death, exactly. More like transcendance.

And the answer? Yep. It would be worth it. I would do that.

This Essay Gets a C Minor

Is it wrong of me to find this video philosophically fascinating? It is, isn't it?

In all seriousness (By which I, naturally, mean "more than a little tongue in cheek"), though, I wanted to change tack a bit with this post and discuss something I don't talk about terribly often: music.

This comic, from back before XKCD jumped the shark (Yeah, I said it. More on webcomics in a future post. Await with anticipation!) illustrates perfectly my feelings on the matter. We suck, guys. We really do.

This is not to say that there aren't artists, that we don't produce excellent music, or even that some of it isn't popular. But good music and great music are two different things. When you listen to Bach or Beethoven or Mozart, you know, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that this is great music, that this is art which transcends everything that came before it and will be the bar to which all after it must be held. And the same, I will contend, is true of art from the musical revolution that preceded my generation. There is a sense of greatness, of achievement, of some kind of transcendental musical experience, that you get when listening to Queen or the Beatles or Led Zeppelin. Whether or not you like their music, there is a quality of greatness which must come through.

I'm going to go on the record here with an address to future musical historians:

Dear Future Musical Historians,

When you decide that the 1960s, 70s, and early 80s were a period of musical rennaissance which rivaled that of the late 16th and early 17th centuries, please remember that I totally called it.

Love, Etarran.

PS. I agree, Katy Perry's "I Kissed a Girl" is totally awesome.

It is telling, I think, that university campuses, supposedly bastions of cultural revolution, primarily have the sounds of forty-year-old music drifting from students' rooms. Not even the generation making modern music thinks it's better than our parents' music.

Perhaps it is too much to expect. After all, a great cultural revolution can come along only once in a very great while. And we do, of course, have our cultural successes. But even those, which are primarily internet-related, are based on technologies and cultures that fundamentally belong to the generation before. And I can't help but think that, in an era of unprecedented cultural freedom and diversity and intercommunication, surely we should be coming up with something better than webcomics and the Rickroll.

Perhaps art simply isn't our destiny. After all, we have more practical problems to deal with. Our parents may have produced excellent music, but they also produced a hell of a lot of carbon dioxide and enriched uranium. But surely we could save the world and rock out?

Get on that, will you?

PS. I was totally serious about Hot n' Cold being philosophically fascinating. I invite you to contemplate its symbolism, which is surpassed, perhaps, only by this video.