Say again?
April 12, 2023. Issue Twenty-eight
This may be the first time that I am glad that I kept my notes from college. I remember a conversation from a German literature course, but I do not remember the details. We were making our way through Thomas Mann’s Doctor Faustus. Our professor recalled a conversation from the 1940’s in Chicago among the brilliant emigres from Europe. One was a physicist, the other a composer and pianist. They were discussing the differences between science and art.
“There was nothing unique about my contribution to science, the math would have led to those equations and theories, but you, creating music, that is art. That composition of yours could only be made by you and performed the way that you just did.”
If I find the right box in the storage unit, I will be able to fill in the details as to who said what to whom. As the gaps increase in my mind, it’s good to have a backup application that doesn’t need battery power.
Until just now, those papers were more of a reminder that once I was a brilliant undergraduate. Now they provide comfort that my memories of the wise ones of previous generations are safe somewhere.
It’s that remembered quote that has my attention. Should the worst occur, and we blow ourselves to kingdom come without benefit of a god to do it, the science will be there, waiting to be rediscovered that will enable whatever sentient beings that are left, to build the weapons to do it again, but the music of Bach, Beethoven, Mozart, and the Beatles will be lost forever.
I wonder at times of what we will never hear or see of the arts and cultures of civilizations rendered back to the dust of archeological digs.
I do find comfort in the belief that none of it is lost because it is all remembered by God who will re-member us one day in a time and place where we can hear it and play it again. That I believe is what is meant by resurrection. We’ll see, God willing.
Be well.