I was working yesterday and put on some music to listen to. I hit shuffle on my “Unplayed” smart playlist in iTunes and a track came up but no sound came out. I realized the speakers were turned off so I went to turn them on. The tune that came out was this intense fractured jungle track with “Hey Jude” by the Beatles being played on top of it. It was wild. One of the best songs I had heard in a long time. I could not concentrate on the work as the music was so good, so I took a little break.
Then something strange happened to the music, a really odd and awkward transition. I looked at iTunes and knew the song that was on and knew it was wrong. It turned out that Pandora had been playing a DJ Spooky track in the background and what I had been listening to was that and the remix of “Hey Jude” from the Love album played on top of each other.
Getting those two tracks to play in sync like that would be difficult to repeat. In a way that is too bad as it would be wonderful to expose other people to this fantastic aural experience. On the other hand there was something profoundly beautiful about getting to experience an unrepeatable situation.
This is some of why sunsets are so amazing to me. They are wholly unrepeatable aesthetic experiences. Second to second they are something wholly other than they were just moments before. This idea can be extrapolated to all kinds of performance. There is something unique and unrepeatable about it. At least for anything short of the Rockettes.
Most of the time our experience with life and the world is chaotic and unorganized. Sounds appear out of nowhere. We find ourselves immersed in a massive John Cage experimental theatre piece. But then out of that chaos there are moments of order. When the random car horn syncs up with the child crying and a musician in the distance plays perfect counterpoint to the couple arguing down the street.
Chaos and order, it seems, are much more closely knit than we often give credit for. The two are aspects of the same phenomena rather than the discreet and opposing forces we so regularly take them for. Life is just combinations of music. Sometimes chaotic, but often quite beautiful.
Tags: advertising, chance operation, chaos, music, order
