Wednes­day night, at the SACS Speech Night, I was reminded of how much I’ll miss the sound of St. Andrews. I don’t even think the music at Speech Night was that great (and stage move­ments were cer­tainly leav­ing some­thing to be desired, but that’s another mat­ter), so com­ment is not being made on the basis of the qual­ity of that… it sim­ply pre­sented a cat­a­lyst for entropic rumi­na­tions that occa­sion­ally (or per­haps more than occa­sion­ally) take place in the mind of this par­tic­u­lar indi­vid­ual, focussing “ran­dom reflec­tion upon the nature of SACS” on the sound of that space. We are bound to the senses, and it is that of aural per­cep­tion which, at this present moment, defines St. Andrews.

I’ll miss going to some lunchtime con­cert Tori has been roped into per­form­ing at — though secretly she enjoys it, I infer from ner­vous­ness and an enun­ci­ated indif­fer­ence to the opin­ions of any aside from that of her mother: some­thing which I cer­tainly take no issue with, being along sim­ply for the ride and offer­ing per­haps as much elo­quent and applic­a­ble crit­i­cism as the piano stool on which she had sat and played some­thing from another world — hear­ing music that is undoubt­edly beau­ti­ful and mean­ing­ful and of value, but it speaks in a tongue (spelt cor­rectly) apart from my own. The words drift over, though, and its essence is often (if not always) cap­tured. At least in part.

These chance encoun­ters with Babel are a near-inescapable facet of the life of a not-musician at that school. There is music to chal­lenge. It incites thought, vio­lently. There is some­thing more buried here unseen. But what? No mat­ter, let it speak in its own lan­guage. The tongue, of course, varies. Some do not take the mind to task. Oth­ers are gut­tural, cut­ting: they haul the mind to con­scious­ness and set it to task unseen… and almost cer­tainly not under­stood. There is a desire, how­ever, to resolve this, such that these velar enun­ci­a­tions might become under­stood. Then, harsh sounds launch into an elo­quent refrain of unpar­al­leled beauty, if it could only be understood!

Com­pre­hen­sion spawns cre­ation. Elo­quence is a sign of vital­ity, whether seen and com­pre­hended or glanced upon and passed over: it needn’t bear under­stand­ing the first time. Ever? One would dare to hope. Though it must be said that the work begun by one may, at another’s hands, give way past the precipice of cog­ni­tion into that dex­ter­ity of the mind that comes with a piece falling into place, one last cog enabling a whole series of gears.

And when will this come? Uncer­tainty per­vades this point. With lis­ten­ing. To what, and for how long? Wrong ques­tions. Impa­tience here is sense­less, though some music may encour­age it. [Grat­ing sounds of post-modern com­po­si­tion break over the speak­ers] Yes. Sense­less. For what else do you wait? Another piece to sim­i­larly rush through? And another? Finite achieve­ment is eru­dite com­pared to the super­fi­cial­ity of infi­nite expe­ri­ence. Such that ‘infi­nite’ is within this life, within this under­stand­ing. Piti­ful. Why, in ask­ing ‘when’, the request is put forth: “how long until I may progress, for­get this and move onwards?” Thus, that which mean­ders should be seen as a lumi­nary force, bring­ing to light impa­tience, the race towards an unen­vis­aged goal. The goal, of course, is achieved: being defined only as pro­gres­sion to the next thing. Macro-experience never comes into play, nor per­haps should it. Music is… of the now? And the now is tran­sient, ephemeral, diaphanous. With­out clar­ity even in that instant… or espe­cially in that instant, form­ing behind once again as the water sub­sides once a body has been removed from it.

Soundtrack/progression/value-added noth­ing. More ideas float, but I feel no com­pul­sion to detail them here. Ideas, like music, may con­tinue to exist in the mind. Some will grate, oth­ers will linger, still oth­ers will drift away when you most desire their com­pany: and tri­umph against the ret­i­cent ones will occa­sion­ally come, though not always. Some things are meant to float in the mind, around the con­scious­ness. Uncalled, yet with­out any desire to push them away once expe­ri­enced — Evi­denced here, you will observe, as I drift from speak­ing in the first per­son to the dis­con­nected mur­mur­ings of con­scious­ness, and then return once again to analy­sis. Which, it should be said, is not anath­ema to music… another way in which it is a great accom­plice of the idea. Both are art.