Chrysalis [ 07. The Rain Dazes ]

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I must have fallen asleep. While rubbing my eyes sleepily, I noticed the rain was letting up a bit, even though it was still there, the constant pitter-patter rhythm like a lullaby persuading me to go back to slumber.
But my mind was already awake, though not fully -- you know, like a trance, dazed, between reality and imagination, the state which you can tip over to either side.
I love rain because it's like curtains. Curtains separate. Sometimes you need your privacy.
I also love that smell of dampness of earth that precedes a downpour. Those organic gases, released from the soil because the atmospheric pressure is lower. To me it's like a promise, a certain sign that a bucket is about to tumble, up there in the heavens. People usually forget this, that something begins; you always remember when it ends, the rainbow appears. When do we all start? When the sperm meets the ovum? When you start emitting brainwave? A beginning is so hard to define.
I also love writing. You know how writing, or a painting, or any piece of art for that matter, has this timeless quality? Time freezes, you can read or view or feel or hear that particular part over and over again. The essence has been captured. The description in a paragraph, the scenery in a painting, the arrangement of sounds in a song, the scene of war on a frieze, the shapes in a sculpture. That frame, or several of them, has been fixed, becoming something that withstands Time itself.
But writing doesn't limit oneself to the freezing of Time, but also the stretching and compressing of it. In Ulysses, James Joyce stretched one day to 265,000 words. I remember my first time seeing the book -- I thought it was an encyclopaedia or something; no, it's a novel. Compression of time is even simpler: "A child was born, grew up until ripe old age, died". In fact, a writer has more mastery over Time than other artists do; a time travel at the flick of the wand: "For as in Adam all die, even so in Christ shall all be made alive".
This manipulation of Time is intoxicating. Perhaps in a few hours the rain would have stopped, but you can go back a few paragraphs, and it was still raining. Every time you come back on this page to this little universe, it is still raining. And it won't ever stop. It's like you've made a rip in the space-time continuum, taking a glimpse of eternity. Isn't it maddening? Isn't it like getting drunk?
A cool breeze gently passed and it calmed me somehow. I sighed. It must have been my daze talking.
I thought I can hear faint sounds of piano -- I think I'm tipping over to dreamland -- no one normally plays at this hour.
Back to sleep.

Milton, Free Expression and A Bibiliophile

As a bibliophile, I was delighted to find this passage in Milton's Areopagitica:

...For books are not absolutely dead things, but do contain a potency of life in them to be as active as that soul was whose progeny they are; nay, they do preserve as in a vial the purest efficacy and extraction of that living intellect that bred them. I know they are as lively, and as vigorously productive, as those fabulous dragon's teeth; and being sown up and down, may chance to spring up armed men. And yet, on the other hand, unless wariness be used, as good almost kill a man as kill a good book. Who kills a man kills a reasonable creature, God's image; but he who destroys a good book, kills reason itself, kills the image of God, as it were in the eye. Many a man lives a burden to the earth; but a good book is the precious life-blood of a master spirit, embalmed and treasured up for purpose to a life beyond life. 'Tis true, no age can restore a life, whereof perhaps there is no great loss; and revolution of ages do not oft recover the loss of a rejected truth, for the want of which whole nations fare the worse.
-- John Milton, Areopagitica

Areopagitica is subtitled "A Speech for the Liberty of Unlicensed Printing to the Parliament of England". It is easy to see that the context here is that Milton wanted to loosen censorship in England, lest some "vials... of living intellect" went unnoticed. In my opinion, I would go as far as saying that not only those who destroy or censure a good book are "killers of reason", but also those who don't read are.
Regarding Milton himself, let's just say that I want to join Woodsworth in saying: "Milton! Thou should'st be living at this hour:"

Chrysalis [ 06. The Sound of Rain ]

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The Piano

The grand piano stood out prominently. Against the background noise of pouring rain, it is silent. Like how silence can be deafening, being still can convey much.
The piano can be compared to an old man, who has grown old gracefully, retaining the knowledge of the experienced, exuding charisma of seniority, of the one who knows the way of the world.
A piano, nonetheless, is a tool not a person. A piano, like any instrument, is a mirror to the soul. It absorbs emotions and thoughts from the fingertips, transcribing it into hammering of the strings, which translates it to a language we call music.
Music is a language. From rhythm, from tempo, from arrangement of melody, from discordant and harmonious chords -- that's the whole phonology, morphology, syntax, semantics, pragmatism -- a language.
Countless people have played it. It shared their joys and griefs, and every emotion in between and beyond. In the story of Narcissus, the Lake cries because it can no longer see its beauty reflected in Narcissus' eyes. The piano is the same: it feeds on the language it was transmitting to hear its own beautiful sounds.
Now here come its Narcissus, sitting by the window, watching the deluge forlornly, but now was making his way towards it, fingertips ready to dance, a Creation is about to begin. Let there be light. It is said that when Haydn's oratorio Die Schöpfung (The Creation) is performed, when Chaos ends and the first movement is about to begin, when the orchestra burst into fortissimo on 'Licht', so great it was that the audience can see light flashing. Something like that, creating something out of nothing.
As soon as its Narcissus started to play, a lightning bolt struck. It has begun.

Shakespeare: All World's A Stage

So let's see, let's see. To tell this story we need appropriate
actors, plot, prop, script -- Ah! What kind?
I'd pick a musical. Not the tragic, nor the comedy. One too morbid, the other too insouciant.
I'd rather
be stabbed at the back, only to burst out singing about the agony.
The beginning is a little hard.
A moment of silence please -
How about the epic: grand story about royal lineage, the beings before the being
the beings that are background of being, culmination being the being?
No.
It should be in medias res -- in the middle of something --
so that the audience is plunged straight to the middle of something, where the real beginning was over and long gone.
Since, isn't it that way we are plunged into being, cast into the light of existence,
the beginning remains something distant, that should not be pried open, lest the evils leak out and Hope is found never at the bottom all along.
After that, the mundane seven ages of Man; oh, the chorus of sighs!
Let's skip the infant and the school-boy;
Jump to the lover, for love is a source of sorrow, and love is a lot to sing about.
Very simple -- plot is usually about love or the lack of it. Done!
Then comes the soldier and the justice. The ages of paradox.
Look at Justitia and her blindfold.¹
The impartial, yet unaimed swing of a sword; the balanced, but unsighted scales.
It is really no wonder that Man,
torn apart between contradictions of his own making,
shifts to the sixth stage, the pantaloon.
Conflict escalated, climax reached, then running out of steam.
Ready to be catapulted back to the beginning that was not really there?
The seventh stage, the oblivion - wait
(Could we please invoke deus ex machina?)

¹Miller, William. Eye for an Eye, page 1 (Cambridge University Press, 2006)

Chrysalis [ 05. It's Raining Contradictions ]

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Alphonse
Usually on rainy days like this I prefer to take advantage of the coolness and sleep. Grab a blanket, go into foetal position, and go into the darkness of slumber. Like a cocoon. Waking up, I would have sprouted wings to fly in the freshness of the new day.
Today, however, I felt like going to the common room where the piano is. I didn't plan to play it; to me, the rain sounds like an orchestra in itself, a harmonious cacophony. That is an oxymoron, but it is not to me. Somehow I can accept that order can arise from chaos. That something can arise from nothing.
So there was I, sitting by the large window, listening to the pitter-patter melody, daydreaming. If no two drops of rain are alike then no two sounds are alike. The strumming of a guitar, the hammer hitting the piano string, the plucking of the harp, the vibration of the violin string: say, all are playing A, that is frequency of 440 Hertz, do they sound the same? Obviously not. That is because they don't produce a singular peak at 440, but each is a sum of several frequencies, peaking at 440. So timbre is like the uniqueness of a sound. Like a name. Splash sound, trickling sound, pouring sound, gurgling sound.
Jake can make the tremolo sound using the piano (which I cannot produce). His nimble finger would fall in quick succession one after another. The notes then become overlapped over one another; coming out as a trill. It sounds like a gentle rain. Warm in certain way. Cool in another way.
I remember my teacher who taught about oxymoron and paradox. "Contradictory but not contradictory -- oxymoron and paradox are paradoxes in themselves." His saying of this stuck. Oxymoron is an exhibitionist. It blatantly display its contrasting words. Paradox is shy. It hides its contradiction under layers of words. Perhaps it is 'sly'; well, it is only one-letter difference. In any case, those contrasting words or ideas are not really contradictory, because they belong to different contexts. Imagine that they belong to different planes -- we can find a common plane where they can co-exist, where they are co-planar.
But I digress. Contradictory. Aren't we all?
We are full of contradictions. Some are obscene like oxymorons, or morons, that will do also; some are discreet like paradoxes.