A fugue

In music, a fugue is constituted of two or more voices repeating a motif, or central theme. After a brief introduction by one, the other voices overlap and interweave, conversing with each other over the motif and accentuating all its eccentricities. Then, the music wanders from the motif and undergoes modulations, or "episodes." The hard structure melts, and what was originally a cut-and-dried theme is now a fluid mixture of sound, comparable to several conversations at once. The music becomes less and less distinct as the voices cascade over each other in counterpoint, swelling and falling to the mood with a life of its own. Then, after a number of episodes, there is a climax, a brief coda, and then the end.

This is the technical definition. Spiritually speaking, I believe it can be deeper than that.

Life, or, more specifically, history, is like a fugue - there is no single story independent from the others. One tale overlaps and influences the other; every action has a cause and effect, like a melodic pull-and-push factor that influences the present, future, and how we perceive the past. For example, we can't just study the American Civil War - we study the tensions between the North and the South, the white and the black, the slave and the free. Within the big picture there are little details, and within the little details, there are small emotions and drives within the individual. Sometimes we think independently; other times, we move as a body. And above it all, there are always recurrent themes, a motif, repeating without end, chasing itself in evermore complex patterns. But every so often, the motif wanders, fades, sometimes forgotten in our memory as we get caught up in the episodes. Then, when we least expect it, on the sudden, the motif returns, sometimes like an explosion, other times like gentle voice of a familiar friend chiming in from an unfamiliar crowd.

But that's just what I think. How about you?

Triplets Against Eighths

So I suppose many of you are wondering about the title of this blog. Some might think, what, identical triplets? Siblings...cut in eighths?

Sadly, I am not a cannibal, so that is not the correct definition.

Actually, as will many posts in this blog, the title refers to music: a triplet set of notes (dividing the beat into thirds) set against an eighth-note accompaniment (dividing the beat into halves). Now, at first, this seems to be a very simple concept; but only at first. Once you try to play such a rhythm, you immediately confuse yourself. The accompaniment tangles up the melody, and vice-versa, until you can't tell heads or tails of what is going on. The triplets are scrunched up, and the eighths take on a swing beat, that, frankly, doesn't belong in Mozart.

So how do you solve this? Sixteenths against eighths are fine, and so are sextuplets against triplets, but two against three? The person who came up with this rhythm must be taken out and shot, you say. I'll be willing to do it, you say, with your fists histrionically punching the air in golden Beethovenian defiance.

That is for the dramatists. For the mathematicians out there, you might decide to subdivide each beat into sixths, since, naturally, this is the lowest common denominator. And so you've again come up with a simple answer to a simple question...right?

Wrong. Still, the melody is in a hodgepodge, and the accompaniment is beyond description. So what do you do?

I asked my singular piano teacher for help once. After some thought (and considerable joking around, as always) he taught me that over-analyzing a difficult situation will only drag you down deeper. Instead, he suggested some gentle, repetitive exercises, where I just let it go, regardless of mind-boggling rhythms and what have you. "Why let yourself get floored by the complexity of a Rubik's Cube when you can just relax and fiddle with the pretty blocks until you get the answer?" he reasons.

Amazingly, within five tries of "letting it go," the rhythm straightened itself out. Now, I just need to figure out triplets against sixteenths...

But before this post becomes too long, I'll summarize it here: When faced with a difficulty, over-analysis can often worsen the situation and only bring stress and anxiety; nothing gets done. When faced with an obstacle, don't lament over yourself and your situation, obsessing over every detail and letting the black doom close in on you - get moving and fiddle with the pretty blocks first.