Music in 12 Parts 2021-11-03 This is something I wrote in my journal in pen on 2018-08-06. It's there among sketches and graphs and jotted dreams. I've reproduced it here philologically accurately -- exactly as it was written. There's something quite special about Philip Glass's "Music In Twelve Parts." I first stumbled across sections of the piece when I f got a record player and inherited my dad's record collection, untouched since, perhaps, the nineties. Among classical and Jazz and strange Latin flute music, I discovered "Music In Twelve Parts — Parts 1 & 2." It was a strange record, even before the needle touched it. Its sleeve, a red-and-white patterned and minimalist thing reminiscent of Sol LeWitt's less strictly linear work, was premonitory of the hypnotic nature of the music it contained and protected from the dust of years,x of moves and forgotten storage. — am i hamming this up too much? whatever; it's fun — The record itself was devoid of the song divisions I'd grown familiar with on other records: each side contained a sole track — long enough to nearly fill the space available. And the music. Timeless and repetitive, trance-like or perhaps magic, full and rich. I'm listening now — Part 3. The piece is, as advertized, split into 12 parts, each one between ten and twenty minutes long. Each piece belongs with every other, but they're all different. The sounds come from, I believe, a few electric organs and a few voices. But even if you could pick them out, this information wouldn't change the experience — and I use that word very deliberately — that the music creates. The music is rythmic and very repetitive. It's soft in feeling, but it's not quiet. A pattern or arpeggiation or cry or motif will repeat fo many times from one voice while another voice may shift its pattern slightly. These staggered transitions result in a single journey through each "Part," no ^one transition is identifiable. But as this journey is walked, things change. At moments, I realize the sounds I'm listening to are signifigantly different than a few minutes ago, but I was never aware of themchanging. This reminds me of growing up — physically — and the way the mind and counciousness adapt to the slow, steady change of the body they inhabit and, at times, control. There was no clear transition mome- nt at which I sprouted facial hair, or pubic hair. Yet there certainly exist identifiable points in time when I clearly did and clearly didn't have hair in those places. This seems to me a contradiction, but I feel its truth — and it's reflected in Glass's work. And the strangely unbroken pattern of grooves on that record re- flect this, too I've listened to this music — especially parts 1 and 2 since I only recently found parts 3–12 online — while studying, reading, writing, thinking, trying not to think, falling asleep, and I'm sure during other activities I can't remember. I wrote all of yesterday's entry while listening, and read the book I was writing about while listening as well. For me, the music fills whatever space it's played in. This is something that I think differentiates it: there are no gaps in the sound. Between human the organs and ^voices, and woodwinds of some kind I believe, there's no silence during the Part. When struggling to desc- ribe this music to a close friend, this aspect of it was all I could lucidly communicate to her. This property I venture to guess this property of the Parts meshes with my mind well, focusing me. Distraction is easily avoided when the music I fall back on when my computational-mind recoils from the strain of focus is so all-encompassing and surrounds me so completely, even taking root in the air around me: seeming not to only exist in the speakers it's sourced from filling and my ears that hear it, but in the room. Perhaps this is why I've read and written to these pieces so much, without really being concious of it. This brings me to the most shiveringly good — or at least affecting — part of the experience which is listening to Music In Twelve Parts: the end. The ends, really. Each Part ends or transitions into the next abruptly, in glaring contrast to the veiled, slippery illusions of transitions change within each Part. And this abruptness is often heralded by the most subtle of building of energy in the music — though there's no change in the notes or pattern themselves. Was this build-up written on the sheet music for the Parts? Is it a subconcious result of the real musicians playing this intense, even arduous, music feeling an preparing, together, for the end? Is there any change at all?, do I only retrospectively hear a subtle x rising energy after I know the Part has ended? Many times the end of a Part — notably 12 and 2 — has produced in me a body-sensation of chills and euphoria which I can't help but ^gently compare to an to an orgasm. The effect is replicable and stunning. I suspect the POWER of these inter-Part transitions and endings can be attributed to at least in part to the repetitive nature of the Parts. Over minutes, the Part shifts slowly and nearly imperceptably like sands in a tide. And suddenly the Part ends and the beginning of a new Part is upon me: the sun has risen above the horizon line and the sands are bathed in gold and red. Though they're the same sands, or slightly changed by the waters, I now see them with new eyes. Where before, I saw in the dusk, I saw patterns in their coursenesses, textures, and grits swirling, and reflections and refractions of the soft sky in the shallow water over them, now I see heights and great valleys made sharp by the angled dawn light, a million sparklings off ripples caused by these peaks. Are there moments like this in life? Moments when the stealthy creep of life and of growth gives way to a shining sunrise of revelation? Can we, I, access these moments? Control them? Create them? Or is it all I can do to enjoy the shiver and crawling skin that the change between Parts brings, to spread my arms and bask in the first morning ray.? And to look around, to listen closer, and see what's new. What's been revealed this time. — 2018•8•6 Yesterday while writing my undergraduate Thesis in Computer Science I was listening to "Music in Twelve Parts" (now it's on Spotify). It still has a strangeness and a beauty for me. Despite style, enough of it -- the power of the music and the memory of writing this -- still holds for me that it belongs here.