By showing how we lacked the strength to bear
Such undeluding truths. Yet, if we came
Up against some mémoire involontaire,
Perhaps some near-death flashback that could frame
And shrink our lifetime to an instant where
The ratios went sky-high, then all the same,
Despite our having taken full on board
All that the mathematikoi had taught
Our time-sick souls, their cure might not afford
Us mental strength enough to face the sort
Of panic-state that used to have us floored
And does right now. Then we perceive how short
Such mind-games fall of finding some accord
Between that old, inconsolable thought
Of temps too soon perdu and tricks that scored
Top points for puzzle-solving though they brought
No sense of kairos gratefully restored
Or gift to heal the damage chronos wrought
When clock-time calibrated. This ignored
Its finely gauged potential to distort
Whatever our life-histories have shored
Against time’s shrewd contrivances to thwart
The time-shaped craving that time should reward
Us tempus-fugitives with times less fraught
Since amply sutured by the triple cord
Of body, mind and world that time holds taut.
DIABOLUS IN MUSICA
Legend has it that an 11th century Benedictine monk and vocal
tutor Guido d’Arezzo coined the dictum “mi contra fa est
diabolus in musica” (“Mi with Fa is the devil in music”) to
discourage vocalists from using specific dissonant
intervals…Here are the implied “mi–fa” combinations including
inversions: C to B is a 7th. F to B is a #4th. B to C is a 2nd. B to F
is a ь5th. Curiously it is only the ь5th of these intervals that
retains the demonic moniker in modern times.
—Guy Pople
There are strict musical rules. You aren’t allowed to use this
particular dissonance. It simply won’t work technically, you are
taught not to write that interval. But you can read into that a
theological ban in the guise of a technical ban.
—John Deathridge
I
Diabolus in musica: they feared
The tritone like the devil; how its spell
Wrought discord in the souls of listeners reared
In diatonic ways and conjured hell-
On-earth to those few auditors sharp-eared
Enough to catch what tales it had to tell
Of chaos come again. As music veered
About the octave’s midpoint so the well-
Trained contrapuntalists who’d once adhered
To Rome’s strict rule were driven to rebel,
Junk all the compass-points by which they’d steered
Well clear of rocks so far, and thenceforth dwell
Way out beyond the tonal safe-zone cleared
By guardians of the faith. And so it fell
On their shocked sense as if the devil jeered
At every effort to suppress or quell
The restlessness that surfaced in such weird
Though ear-beguiling sounds as might compel,
Alas, such devilish deafness to revered
And hallowed teachings.
II
Forward wind: Purcell
Writes harmonies that, for the Fathers, seared
The listener’s soul but makes the most of their
Now devil-free potential to augment
Both simple fourths and whatsoever share
Of grief those intervals might represent,
Yet in a way that bids the church forebear
To challenge or proscribe since clearly meant
To signal how its dissonance may square
With what fresh scope the Reformation lent
To such displays of feeling. These declare
How all the major-minor shifts that went,
Back then, to plant the warning sign “Beware,
Forbidden territory” now circumvent
That rule by saying: hear the soul at prayer
In harmonies that speak of its intent
To cast aside all rules that might impair
True passion’s voice. How else should it lament,
As Purcell did, when called upon to spare
No depth of feeling such as once he’d spent
Great effort to suppress but now took care,
As in his Funeral Sentences, to vent
In ways that few before or since would dare.
III
Sibelius Four: the tritones occupy
Almost the whole of tonal space, yet stay
Well short of atonality. For why
Take Schoenberg’s route and leave yourself no way
To raise the norm of dissonance so high
Within that space that music might convey
Such harsh and hard-won truths? They fructify,
Those tritones, till the only truths that they
Afford the listener willing to get by
On such cold comfort rests in what they say
Of how the laws of entropy apply
To music, how the living sounds decay,
How vainly the negentropists deny
What no mere shift of key can long delay,
Or how those demon intervals they try
Through careful filtering to hold at bay
Must shortly find them out and so defy
Their sanguine gloss. If seasoned listeners pay
The devil his due it’s when keys go awry,
When some chord-sequence instantly falls prey
To ear’s equivalent of evil-eye
And false relations once again betray
The tritone’s devilry. So all hopes die
Of any modulation fit to play
A saving role and reassert the tie
Of tonic-dominant that kept such stray
Augmented intervals from letting fly
With aural weaponry designed to fray
Those homely chords. Yet still the tritones vie
For extra Lebensraum, strive as we may
To tune out alien frequencies, decry
Their every land-grab, and resist the sway
Of alien powers. That’s why our ears fight shy
Each time that E flat modulates to A.
WEATHER
‘Weather forecast for tonight: dark.’ (George Carlin)
The night before, quite late, was when you said
How other people change in just the way
The weather changes; how we plan ahead,
Switch plans with what the latest forecasts say,
And tend to take it pretty much as read
They’ll not be too far out. Yet, come the day,
Us trusting types may find we’ve been misled
By the same over-confidence that they,
The weather-experts, showed. Let’s think instead
(You mused that night as nerves began to fray
And time drew on but still not time for bed)
That what sends all those best-laid plans astray
Is what the wisest people-watchers dread
As much as weather-watchers. Our dismay
When things go wrong then tells us we must shed
The old delusion that we knew what lay
Days, hours or minutes off and learn to tread
More cautiously so as to keep at bay
The kinds of future-shock designed to shred
Our puny storm-defences. If we play
Along with the old forecast-game that spread
Such confidence it’s odds-on we’ll betray,
Like me next day, the false assurance bred
By seasonal routines
that first convey
Glad tidings but, when once we lose the thread
And panic strikes, collapse the whole array
Of habit-formed expectances that fed
Our need to buck the odds and disobey
The canny gambler’s rule. If I saw red
That morning or put up some fool display
Of teacup storm-cloud conjuring that led
To an occluded cold front, one that may
Prefigure climate-change, then what you said
The previous night, though true, is apt to prey
More harshly on mild weather-watchers wed,
Like me, to forecasts saying things will stay
Much as they were till all the lines go dead.
LOST SOULS
Dear Dr. Weeks,
I would think that as people get older their eccentricities would become more evident as they would be more able to express themselves freely. Instead I find the opposite. Most senior citizens are total conformists who don’t want to deviate from the pack in any way. Are my observations valid? Do tendencies to express yourself change with age?
—Carol
Dear Carol,
Generally speaking, eccentric people become more eccentric with age. However, eccentric people do not become eccentric in old age; most eccentrics become eccentric in childhood or adolescence. If a person, especially a male, were first to show eccentric behavior in old age, as a clinician I would consider other causes. It would suggest illness, either of a psychiatric or physical nature. However, where there are higher concentrations of older retired people—in Britain, around the seacoast—there will be more older eccentric people, perhaps because eccentrics tend to live longer.
Yours sincerely,
Dr. David Weeks
Time was when university or church
Offered a bolt-hole, refuge in distress,
Or last-chance hideaway for those in search
Of any spot where their contrariness,
Their stubborn eccentricity or lack
Of savoir-faire might not make such a mess
Of things or let catastrophes so stack
Up that they’d more than likely come to grief
Should circumstance decree they venture back
Into the outside world. There’s no relief
Now for these émigrés to inner space
Except the dubious blessing of a brief
And youthful intermission at some place
Of “higher learning” where the main idea
Is higher earning, or—as in the case
Of those for whom the other-worldly sphere
Is theocentric—some sequestered school
Of faith and ministry. Whence they’ll appear,
Some few years on, to play the holy fool,
Though scarcely blessed with what Erasmus thought
The higher wisdom that, by a strict rule
Of role-reversal, was most aptly taught
By those accounted fools on any score
Drawn up by all the wise guys. Now they’re caught,
Imperfect fools, without the old rapport
That put them on a wavelength finely tuned
To God’s own channel so that they implore
Our charitable alms like souls marooned
By backwash from the “melancholy, low,
Withdrawing roar” to which the lovers swooned
In Arnold’s loss-of-faith seduction show.
Now the mudflat-revealing tidal reach
Just goes to show how far that long-ago
Consolatory scene on Dover Beach
Falls short of any promise to console
These scholar-gypsies of our time, or teach
Them an updated version of the role
In which he neatly managed to combine
Those low-prophetic vibes (sea over shoal,
Love over waning faith) with a good line
In classy chat-up talk. Not so his lost
Inheritors whom fate or genes consign
To mere perdition as the hidden cost
Our modernizers one and all see fit
To pay while little heeding who gets tossed
Into the limbo of stray souls that flit
Disconsolate from worldly scene to scene
Until they either find the nerve to quit
That whole charade or take the might-have-been
Replacement world of make-believe as their
Safe haven from the pressures of routine
Or fears of how the actual may ensnare
The possible. At any rate no scope
For those who’d draw a cordon sanitaire
Around their eccentricity and hope
By that to keep the new regime at bay,
Or give themselves a bit of room to cope
With the new rule-book drawn up to convey
A blunt demand. This says they’d better stick
Within the bounds of actualité
And do their level-headed best to kick
Those self-indulgent reveries that grant
Them absolution simply at the flick
Of a switch wired to make it seem they can’t,
For now at least, be subject to the kinds
Of norm that rule no fiction should supplant
The hic et nunc of more resilient minds.
And then, as if such chivvying weren’t enough
To fray the nerves of anyone who finds
No comfort-zone in that quotidian stuff
But ample cause for fear, there’s what they’ve done,
Those new viceroys of academe, to snuff
Out the last sparks of selfhood, one by one,
And so at last inaugurate the reign
Of universal dullness. This might run
As if in grooves so long as they remain
Sole arbiters of what should make the grade
As four-star scholarship and what they deign
To mention, if at all, under some trade-
Description such as “Miscellaneous,” “Type
Four: other public output,” or just “Weighed
In our research-grant scales and rated tripe
By all the indicators.” Then, worse still,
There’s the unspoken flipside of this hype
For rule-bound mediocrity that will,
Once prompted, find occasion to suggest
That, sad to say, they’re way over the hill,
Those name-antiquities, or past their best
In terms of anything that might compute
With management or pass the final test
Of excellence requiring that one suit
One’s own objectives to the standard set
By corporate bosses eager to recruit
Young talent bright and keen enough to get
A toehold on the ladder, although not
So bright and keen as might just pose a threat
To corporate values. As a parting shot
Line-managers can nowadays inject
That weasel-word, “eccentric,” that they jot
Down once the tick-box bits have all been checked,
With a strong hint that here the word implies
Not “pretty crazy, as you might expect
Of one so highly gifted,” nor “defies
Our best attempts to place them on a scale
Drawn up for lesser minds,” but—in the guise
Of fond indulgence—more a bid to nail
Their “eccentricity” as bearing all
The tell-tale marks of intellect grown frail,
Or mind that’s frankly not quite on the ball
And needs a rest. Behind it looms the great
New terror whose first tell-tale signs appall
The self-observer whose declining state
Becomes the single focus of their own
And others’ urgent need to estimate
What’s left of mind or selfhood in that zone
/> Of indistinction where their power to bring
About Kant’s fragile bond of knower and known
Grows weaker as they desperately cling
To its last vestiges. This cruelest twist
Of implication is the very thing
Most needed by the canny strategist
One of whose tasks is quietly to propose
A means by which some colleagues might be kissed
Goodbye with no requirement to disclose
Good grounds or reason since it’s pretty much
The common wisdom now that most of those
Past middling years will likely show a touch
Of (let’s say) idiosyncrasy. And then,
More senior still—once they’ve advanced to such
An age as tops the old three-score-and-ten—
They start to recognise the shifty look
And awkward topic-change that follows when
They talk about the article or book
They’re working on, or how they’re keen to take
A term’s research-leave (since the last they took
Was decades back), if only for the sake
Of catching up with all the latest trends
Or struggling, for the umpteenth time, to make
Some sense of deconstruction. Even friends,
For the Tempus-Fugitives Page 3