Harmony Universal: Movement 1
Singing, The Very Nature of Reality
Welcome ladies and gents!
This is the first of two movements in the production of Harmony Universal – a sensational and bewildering spectacle in which Aaron, our protagonist, claims to have discovered a new “theory of everything.” He calls it the Singalong “Theory.”
Does the universe break out in song? Will our hero redefine science and the world as we know it? Can Aaron face the world after making such a damned fool of himself?
Sit back, relax, and take caution as you enter into the recesses of an absent mind.
Now, without further adieu, here is Harmony Universal’s Movement 1 – “Singing, the Very Nature of Reality.”
In Choir-ing Mind
I used to think singing was for girls. I’m not sure if that is patriarchal or not. Give me a break! It was 1981, and I was 5.
I probably thought this because my mom sang in local musical productions and, once in a while, in the Methodist church choir (though we weren’t church-goers). Last I checked, my dad still willfully avoids singing.
Now, I don’t think singing is only for girls. If it is, they should be envied most of all creatures! I have come to understand that singing is a most powerful and divine gift! In fact, I think singing holds the universe together.
Sonata Singer?
I am not a good singer. If you take the time to listen to my studio recordings, you likely won’t comprehend the money spent on editing, auto-tune, and effects. The engineer was a true miracle worker!
Are you taking any voice lessons? he asked during one recording session.
It was quite obvious he wasn’t wondering where he, too, could learn to sing like a choir of angels.
So, I asked around and found a vocal coach. The guy I found was himself training under a nationally renowned voice coach, and he had sung at Carnegie Hall among other acclaims.
Starting my first lesson, he asked, When do you think you took your most pure breath?
I don’t know. While sleeping? Maybe when I was a baby? I said, not knowing where this was going.
That’s right. It was your first sleeping breath.
He went on to explain that the hardest part of learning to sing is unlearning the bad breathing habits adults have picked up over time to get as close to that “first pure breath” as possible.
Are you a follower of Jesus? he asked.
That was unexpected.
Yes?
Great. We can really talk about singing. God made the body to sing. It is the greatest instrument in the world!
He went on to explain that proper breathing requires the whole body. He talked about the way the parts of the body work together – how the head is shaped; the beneficial connections between the ears, mouth and nose; the breathless functional design of the lungs, rib structure, and diaphragm; and the natural posture of the shoulders down through your legs to your toes. When the whole body is purely engaged, an infinite number of sounds can be produced with the smallest amount of effort.
Ok, I thought. I’ll go with it…whatever.
Om…My God!
Three lessons in, I experienced what my coach called “the ping.” Most people who experience the ping are describing a vocal beauty and quality that produces a mysterious, enchanting effect. That did happen, but that’s not what I’m talking about.
I’m talking about a vibration piercing my skull at such a frequency that it shocked me to my core long after I had stopped singing. This feeling was similar to the most overwhelming orgasm I have ever experienced (kudos to the wifey ;). But, (at the risk of being a jackass) this was greater. It persisted as I walked ½-mile to the train, through 4 station stops, then another ¾-mile walk from the train to my apartment, and the last remnants held on for a few more minutes after I walked up 4-flights of stairs and sat down in bewilderment.
This prompted me to search for references to singing in the Bible. It’s everywhere.
Song of Songs
The Old Testament has whole books of songs (the 3 books of Psalms and Song of Songs for example). Then there’s Deborah’s song and Hannah’s song; Mose’s song and Mary’s song; Simeon’s song and even Saint Paul, that pragmatic intellectual theologian, quotes songs and poetry. I’ve even heard some scholars believe much of the prophetic books were originally sung.
And there are numerous references to singing – the heavens and earth sing, moon and stars, mountains and valleys, all of creation, and every heavenly host sings. In fact, Israel’s greatest king, David, increased the number of temple songwriters, singers and musicians to 1,000 to make sure there was singing in the temple 24/7. Talk about supporting the arts!
Speaking of Miracles
While conducting my review, I kept thinking there’s something really mysterious going on in the Bible’s first chapter, which describes the creation of the universe. Christianity is not so out of vogue that you haven’t heard its opening line “In the beginning, God created the heavens and the earth.” Maybe you thought it started with “God said let there be light.”
Whatever you may have heard, Christianity, Judaism, and Islam still hold that God created everything, and that God made everything by speaking.
Oh, my God! That sounds like crazy fundamentalist talk! is a very reasonable reaction.
I know. When I decided to follow Jesus, I thought I was insane. However, almost immediately I started seeing that the world was not what I had been telling myself. It is a lot more magnificent than I’d ever imagined. Crazy shit is everywhere!
There’s this quote attributed to a really smart guy named Albert who came up with some catchy math, like E=mc2. Reportedly he said, There are two ways to live your life. One is as though nothing is a miracle. The other is as though everything is a miracle.
That pretty accurately describes the change in my perspective. Having been given fresh eyes, I love considering the depths of common stuff. It fills me with a sense of wonder and possibility.
I would love to go on about the 66,000-miles (100,000 km or 2.5x the earth’s circumference) of veins, arteries and capillaries that fill one human body with life and that there are currently more than 500-trillion such life-giving miles (over 86 light-years long) walking around this earth. I wonder how many light-years there are in all living creatures!? And, I might tell you that blood travels all of those 66,000-miles once every minute. I could even wax on about how there are more atoms in one living human than there are stars in the entire universe (wax off). But I won’t amaze you with such factoids (or my ability to do a few Google searches).
Typing of Miracles
I will, however, call your attention to one mundane thing of relevance to this Strain of Thought.
Consider computer programming. Computer languages work like fucking magic! Some really smart lady types some secret “code,” and all of the sudden, shit happens! Lights turn on, robots dance, a fricken’ laser beam gives sight to the blind, and satellites in space follow your every move in high definition. This kind of “speech” is augmenting our world and creating whole new virtual ones!
That’s one giant leap toward what happened when God said, let there be, and it was so.
“Universe” the Broadway Musical
If you can get past the Bible’s first few lines, you’ll notice that that first chapter reads like a poem; actually, more like an ancient pop song heavily influenced by Bob Dylan. There’s a sizable number of Christians (scholars and C-pop fans alike) who think it is a song.
Maybe it’s not literal. Maybe it’s communicating some abstract truth. Maybe it’s describing reality in poetry and song, because we could never comprehend the reality of reality. Maybe it’s letting us in on the very nature of reality?!
Well, there’s this other really old book in the Bible, maybe the oldest, named Job. It has a parallel “creation story” that throws in an interesting twist – I (God) laid the foundations of the earth…When the morning stars (angelic beings) sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy…
Again, maybe it’s poetry, but the insinuation here is that there was singing (or something like singing) happening while God spoke the world into existence. You could say that the glory of a sunset and the majesty of a mountain are but echoes, reverberations of that original song.
Let There Be Singing
By now, you see where I’m going with this. I think God created the universe by singing.
I bet you are also thinking, Nice “theory” Aaron. Why are you wasting my time?
Fair enough. I have an impeccable reputation for wasting time.
Hear me out…understanding where everything came from, why it’s even here, and where it’s all going provides the foundations for meaning and purpose. When it comes to figuring out your purpose for living, the psycho-analyst and Auschwitz survivor Viktor Frankl might say that that is the most important thing you can do. As he observed in the concentration camps, having a life’s purpose could be the only thing that keeps you alive when you’re in the middle of some wicked shit.
What were humans made for? Back to that chapter 1 “creation song”…near the end, the lyrics say every person is created to maintain and cultivate the whole world. So, if the world is a song, we were created to keep that song going and use all of our creative energy to add our own harmonies, riffs, and motifs to it. Seems my vocal coach was onto something.
We were made to sing. I can’t think of a more beautiful purpose for living.
Coda You Explain Yourself?
You probably should be thinking “Very cute, Aaron. But, I don’t care what the Bible says. It’s a myth that don’t mean shit to me. You need to keep it real.”
I understand this sounds like the kind of “theory” a stoned fundamentalist Christian might have philosophized the first time he smoked pot. To be frank, pot doesn’t do much for me. And, I wasn’t a Christian the first time.
Unfortunately, I’ve hit the end of my arbitrarily imposed page limit. I will provide “scientific” backup, but you’ll need to wait for the second movement – after a short intermission.
Before heading to the lobby for a drink, let me give you a few tangible reasons to come back to your seat.
First, at least 55% of the world’s population considers some part of the Bible a foundation for interpreting the world.
Right, right. You don’t care. You’re not the type to jump off a bridge just because all the popular kids are doing it.
Well, from these “Bible-infused” interpretations, the world has received algebra, universities, hospitals, charities, public education, the scientific method, human dignity and human rights, the abolition of slavery and apartheid, women’s suffrage, civil rights, and a vast amount of humanity’s richest art, plus lots of other good stuff like forgiveness and redemption ((along with perpetual warring over the middle eastern h-oil-land. I mean holy land. But remember, judge a worldview (like a scientific theory) by the outworkings of its principles. And, not the perversion of them)).
For these significant achievements, I think it’s worthwhile for any considerate person to come back (and maybe invite a friend).
Sham-rock & Roll
There is, of course, that other matter concerning the Bible’s first chapter that just happens to be true – the Big Bang. When renowned astronomer and mathematician Sir Fred Hoyle flippantly referred to the preposterous idea that there was a beginning of the universe as the “big bang,” he dismissed the notion as “irrational and outside science.” Many scientists didn’t like the religious implications (quite a few still don’t, thus the Multiverse “Theory”).
Smart scientists can be wrong, too. They aren’t emotionless computers, you know.
To be clear, I’ve never claimed to be a scientist (or even intelligent for that matter), and for that very reason I think the Singalong “Theory” would be a very nice compliment to the Big Bang Theory. It makes the universe an Irish pub – full of boisterous merriment on the verge of violent fisticuffs.
(Close Curtains)