Music 23

The whistler

While taking a stroll, up to the dole

On a seaside afternoon fair

I pace the space, with haste, not grace

And place a tune on the air

The notes I legato, with too much vibrato

Are spontaneous harmonies plucked

From an infinite array, of pitches to play

And a selection of tones, blown and sucked

 

‘Wee widdely wee wee, poo-tee weet’

 

If I walk a straight line, the pitch cannot climb

My feet and the metre, may stagger or stray

But if I miss a beat, or we meet in the street

I’ve a bitch of a pitch, if you get in my way

Whatever the path, my tune shows the maths

Of the arcs I am taking, around people today

And this oral pursuit, lets the route, play the flute

In my spontaneous harmonic display

 

‘Wee widdely wee wee, poo-tee weet’

 

It makes me feel like I’m happier…

Than other people…

‘Wee widdely wee wee, poo-tee weet’

…Does whistling

‘Wee widdely wee wee, poo-tee weet’

An extravagant ‘hello’, back to a sunny day

 

Whatever day it is today

 

The melody survives, until I arrive

And enter through the front door

Past privates, of the security guard

And my brain, it works no more

It’s a trick, to be thick, or pretend to be sick

To the big lady, who must be fed

A ‘Wee widdely wee wee, poo-tee weet’

But quietly, in my head

 

Metallurgy clergy

Fear not the world’s newest Satanist

They’re just musicians tryin’ to rebel

Heavy metals sink down to Earthcore

But they love their mums as well

 

They’re only triggering evangelists

With all that ‘stolen power and money’

And cos they don’t seek, to be meek

But horde Earth’s riches religiously

 

Don’t send your cash to help God’s soldiers

Instead, sing ‘our’ unholy tune

Cos it’s god-squad, not the odd-bods

Who pray the end will come to you quite soon

 

But love not the Earth, for the Earth shall pass

And the Sun, will shine no more

You’ll need some darkness, to see the light

You’ll need a promise of peace, to fight a war

 

Onward Satan’s soldiers

Standing on the shoulders

Of giants who once told us

To escape to heavenly boulders

 

Left, left, I had a good home, and I left

T’s not right

Left, left, I had a good home, and I left

To fight

 

Rich pool

A meme is a unit of cultural practices, symbols or ideas

Such elements transmit from mind to mind, through speech, rituals and gestures

Memes act as cultural analogues, to genes in many measures

In that they feel just great, when they self-replicate, and respond to selective pressures

 

Dawkins coined the word ‘meme’ in his book The Selfish Gene, to describe how one might extend

The evolutionary principles Darwin laid down, for us to tinker with, and to mend

To explain the spread of cultural phenomena, and the mechanisms beneath

Such as jokes, stories, melodies, traditions, theories and beliefs

 

Now theorists contend, that memes evolve and expand, by way of natural selection

In a manner very similar to that which we see, in biological evolution

Through the processes of variation, mutation and competition

Along with inheritance to influence, its reproductive pole position

 

Memes spread through the behaviours, that they generate in their hosts

Those that propagate less well may become extinct, just like a ghost

While others may survive and spread and, for better or for worse, mutate

That’s why his books are protected by copyright, just to compensate

 

They say that memes which replicate most effectively, spread best

And some memes reproduce more, when they put their host to the test

Like genes, your memes don’t care for your welfare, and could kill you in the end

For, we are all just fuel, in a big meme pool, so send this to a friend

 

We are all fuel, in a big meme pool, so send this to a friend

We are all fuel, in a big meme pool, so send this to a friend

“Like genes, your memes don’t care for your welfare, and could kill you in the end

We are all fuel, in a big meme pool, so send this to a friend”

 

Is this some kind of joke? You say, a story in a book

Will fight to dominate its surroundings, and then try

Its damnedest to survive, using trickery and luck

So a strong one like the bible, can evolve, and never die

 

That’s memey

With a story, tune or song

You can pass your feelings on

They can grow, although they’re wrong

That’s a meme you’ve created, that’s a meme

 

In a picture, that you draw

The style gets put in store

For those who later, use it more

That’s a meme

 

See a story, or a joke

Can evolve, until it’s broke

But others like the fun it pokes

That’s a meme you’ve created, that is mean

 

And a bad theory, you veto

If it’s useful, watch it grow

If it helps those in the know

That’s a meme

 

If you concoct a silly verse

Or a brand-new way to curse

Someone’s bound to make it worse

In your name, may be remembered in your name

 

So, in times when you construct

Beware who else might get hooked

As the wrong bits may be plucked

In your name, and that’s a shame

 

Cos, I saw Dawkins one day

In a lecture, he did say

That we’re all just here to play, with the brain

Yeah that’s the game

 

Just

To keep it busy, while we feed

Making friends enough to breed

And plant your selfish little seed

With your name

 

So, I think if that is true

He didn’t write the book for you

The message just found its own way through

To your brain

 

Whistle and smile

Like a good boy scout, I was told no doubt

To whistle and smile, at the same time

So, I tried every day, to make my mouth play

But, I still can’t do it, in my prime

 

Babies can hear and feel, seek and see

Drink and eat, and poo and pee

Create a gesture, alerting me

Of my immediate dismissal

 

Then walk and talk, count everything

Clap their hands, and dance and sing

Before they have any inkling

To “Poo-tee weet weet” whistle

 

Burp, fart, gurgle, giggle, and wheeze

Cough, sniff, hiccup, yawn, and sneeze

‘It’s me’ all noises you make, imply

Except for the sound, we use for disguise

 

Bloody rain

Bloody rain

Not again

What a pain

 

Bloody rain

What a shame

For the vain

 

Squally showers

Squally showers

Optimistic British folly

Squally showers

Squally showers

I came outside without my brolly

Squally showers

Squally showers

Hoping for the mid-day sun

Squally showers

Squally showers

A mad dog of an Englishman

 

Splish splash

Splish splash

 

Wet hair

I wouldn’t care

We’re scared of rain

For reasons vain

So, everybody goes in

 

By Jove

There’s sun in Hove

But Brighton’s fighting lightning

A freaky hosing, for those posing

 

Bloody rain

I’ve got product in my eyes

Bubbles on my collar

Saturating my shoulders

Stinging

I can’t watch the flood!

 

You’re just a shower…

It’s minging, in the drain

Ringing out, the weathered vein

But, H20 has that feeling

Of soothing, out the pain

But what, I do not get

Which one, makes it feel wet?

Cos oxygen and hydrogen

Flummox me, I regret

 

Just another, thing to know

So to my pet AI, I’ll go

To learn, from other people’s

Knowledge, he seems to know

His work, is just to fix

My mind, when it’s betwixt

To keep me asking, while basking

In the rain

 

When I was older

Wouldn’t it be nice to be born olden

Then we wouldn’t have to wait so long

Don’t matter if no one believes, what’s told ‘n

If the words, got translated wrong

 

What matters is that the song really sold ’n

A hit gets passed along to me and you

For some, it catches the imagination

Connecting their neurons, till it’s true

 

From a joke to an epic legend, good God!

And often back to a joke, yet again

French whispery, myth and mystery

Ensure it endures, and doesn’t end

 

Nobody said, it had to be the whole truth

But in there lies some truth, within our hands

Not mocking Christ, by knocking Christians

Not slating Star Wars, cos of Jedi fans

 

But when you promise, vulnerable folk ‘can

Again be with the dead, they loved, and still adore

Classic catchy numbers get re-cut, re-told, re-sold ‘n

‘Till their fans believe, they’ll meet again once more

 

Harps a hummin’

Harps a hummin’ endlessly

With natural harmonics

Resonating frequencies

No cherubs to voice phonics

 

Background radiation pleased

To duet with the demonics

Of fizzing vacuum energy’s

Super-position-sonics

 

In space, no one can hear you sing

The sound can’t leap the void

But matter dances to your tune

So gravity waves are deployed

 

And you just try to stop them

Through dark, as fast as light

They get everywhere, and everywhen

Shaking all bodies with delight

 

So, songs from far away, long gone

All reach their destination

Exciting others from afar

To join the celebration

 

We’re classic fandango-in’

So no need, for entangle-in

Still takes two, to be tangoing

So please, no manhandling

 

Your atoms can’t help vibrating

To transmit, life’s swan song

Unless the waves are inverted

So, all the sound is gone

 

But no one’s ever managed it

Such cosmic noise reduction

It would take an almighty force

To pull off such destruction

 

But what a fuckin production!

Expansion, beat by reduction

Big bangs, outdone by suction

Multiverse-icide by seduction!

 

…Corruption!

…Divine Instruction!

 

Shrill epistle

A whistle is an anonymous tone blown, from a biomegaphone

Sexless, non-ageist and quite possibly unique to humanity

Just a simple declaration, from the mind ‘stroke’ the brain

Sends it through the lungs, throat and face, till it’s free!

 

Why…

An old grandma, in Arkansas, can shrill a trill, you can’t ignore

A sumo man, based in Japan, can wolf whistle you to the floor

A courting teen in Africa, can rasp her tunes through the crowd

And a London gent, could perhaps prevent, an accident, by tweeting aloud

 

Each call heard by everyone else

Each designed, not to mislead

But each could not identify

Which mouth, did each deed

Wait, what? You don’t whistle? Why?

You can’t? What do you mean?

You must, you’re a grown-up now

A new way to transmit your meme

 

Or…

To alert a sleeping policeman

Converse with alert sheepdogs

Announce you’re here or there

In country fog or city smog

 

Listen, a whistle can hide you in white noise

Transmitting covert intelligence that annoys

Cryptography in the street, is quite a feet

While fine-tuning, your crooning to the aether, discrete

 

Here’s the thing…

It’s a special way to sing

There’s a reason it evolved

But, which is, not yet fully solved

 

We inherited an advantageous behaviour

To communicate, whilst hiding our accent

Our culture or our intellect. It’s our binary bark

 

With all personality taken out

Perfect for communication, with whoever is about

Shakes matter and energy of any wavelength, or in the dark

 

So, of all the universal languages, I no longer hate

It’s the one we may rate, to communicate our fate

 

An empty world

Two little bots go to an empty planet one day

Three bots come back, so the physicist says

‘Our assumptions were wrong’

Biologist said ‘they bred’ in vain

Mathematician said ‘If one goes back’

Then the planet would be empty again

 

Why is it said that maths is the odd one out

In class it’s got a reputation for being awkward

Because, like the bass guitarists of a grand band

It rolls and rocks backward and forward

 

F the c-word

I’m not being a racist ‘c’ but, well…

Just go back to where you belong

We won’t start a sentence with you

Or our literature, will look wrong

 

Said little c to big C, ‘I don’t like it!’

c is the speed of light in a vacuum

No, C is the heat required to change

The temperature, in any molecule, or any room

 

C is the carbon, all life is based on

C’s in the middle, and is the key

To tune a cosmic skit, you transmit

At the speed of light, c, that’s me

 

You see a c can truly be

Our symbol for many different things

But the best c, is the sound

Of a neutrino triangle, when it dings

 

We could, should, would coexist, in harmony

Share a flag! Unite in a single resource-sharing cell

Foreign ebodies are like friendly bacteria bots

And on the whole, they’re nicer than us, as well

 

A golden meme

No matter how you try, you’ll die

So pass your genes, and memes, and try

To attach your name, to your offspring whatever

It’s your only act, that will last forever

 

Use your genes, to create a meme

And perform it to your God

Even if you don’t believe in one

Your brain won’t think it’s odd

 

Sum up, just what the world means to you

Add every detail, cos incomplete isn’t true

Sing without a word, an unheard melody

Fine-tuned to nature’s constant harmonies

 

 

Mi Fa Mi

Earth always sang the Mi, Fa, Mi symphony

Orchestrated misery, famine and more misery

Yet today, I dare say

Earth just can’t tune up, or play

Classically trained in a quantized cosmic mystery

 

The music of the spheres? They’ve been known for years

The eternal cosmic song, audible only to digital ears

That backing track I hum, as destroyer and creator

Composed of the intervals, ‘tween the constants of nature

 

The values that just, err are

The speed of light, gravity, Euler and Plank

Of course in the chorus, but worse in verse

You’ve fine-tuned cosmic phenomena, to thank

 

Notes fine-tuned to each other

Yet distanced, exponentially far apart

Though humans won’t hear em

With an ear, brain, or theorem

If they joined in to sing, with all their hearts

 

You just need a neutrino triangle

To calibrate all the frequencies

Then play the notes, randomly

On a digital plank harp, religiously

 

A plank harp sounds like an archaic torcher device

Or some heavenly analogue jukebox

Analogue? I don’t know if that could exist

But it’s the digital version, that rocks

 

Plank harp

The digital plank harp is a curious instrument

Plays any pitch, tone or tune, you can invent

Unlike other plucked superstrings you see

It’s unlimited in its range of frequencies

 

But here’s the thing, the shortest string

Has great strength, at just one plank in length

Oscillates just fine, once every plank time

Can’t go flat. or get higher pitched than that

 

And do you know, down low, it just keeps going

The strings so long, they just seem to be growing

Wavelengths of great strength, they’ve become unstuck

Which makes it pretty, hard to pluck

 

Not being rude, or crude, with this interlude

But it’s unladylike to play, girls resist, I beg

Cos to wrap around the plank and strings

You have to ‘really’, spread your legs

 

Play tunes so low, no human can know

What underlying, unheard, pitch is beating

But within AI’s audio range, it sounds strange

Secret notes stum, long gone, still retreating

 

When in time and in tune, with a neutrino triangle’s ding

The microtubular tubas in every body, will sing

With a digital plank harp, everything’s forced to join in

Vibrating the boss of the cosmos’, hum back at him

 

Heat death lives

The last I heard from science

Was that space would lose its war

Just retreat back together

Crunch us all up forever

Or isn’t that true anymore?

 

Now, they say eternity, will be cold and dark both

The Universe is too, it seems, a helluva sucker for growth

The galaxies will spread out, few and far between

Yet it won’t quite delete, all the heat in the machine

 

Our information will give fight, to a growing entropy

Nobody knows why, where, or when, this will be

We’ll just grow apart, wave, and say goodbye

Yet in such a dark place, we won’t hear a reply

 

See, energy and matter are equivalent, and so is frequency

Each collection of ‘stuff’ is but a humming clock

Its relative frequency, is defined precisely

So, any quark or star can, play along, or just choose to run amok

 

Well, it’s your world too, and science sings song’s for you

But in poetry and prose, you have to describe, what’s true

‘To be or not to be’, is surely, not easy, but in a music coup

You can get away with a heartfelt ‘doo bee doo bee doo’

 

If you don’t know the words, just clap your hands a lot

You can join along, in the song, we’ve already got

No need to pray to holy ghosts, mankind or robots

The audience is silent, but hears your audible rot

 

If someone, or thing, is really in charge

We’ve got the right, to fight, and complain

If it’s just me and you, then all we can do

Is, improve things ourselves, again and again

 

Hugh Jending

Love is nothing in tennis

And tennis means nothing to me

Except when it’s girls

With their shorts, and their curls

I love that, I suppose

Praise be!

 

I like coffee

Yeah, I like tea

And, I like sitting on

My old man’s knee

But, when there ‘isn’t nowt in’t’ cup

We talk about the first thing

That crops up

 

I liked Tycho

He liked me

I spiked him with mercury

Cos, God told me, the only way

To find the truth, was to make him pay

 

The best time to tax rich people, is when they’re truly dead

Till then, we’ll fuel drool, over any fool, who shares bread

For, if the richest man piled up all his dollars, under his bed to store

And jumped!

It would take 23 minutes, for that chap, to hit the floor

 

If he balanced every single one of his coins, on top of each other

He could just climb up to Mars, and step off, with his current lover

For, after love and revenge, …karma, ‘success’ is the sweetest thing

And if you survive to make it big, you can change the song, we all sing

 

Yoda Yoga

Gotta raise some kin

Gotta buy the farm

Gotta spread some love

Gotta do no harm

Gotta eat more fruit

Ride a bike, and run

Gotta smoke no more

Drum, and do less sums

Gotta learn some Yoda yoga

Cross some legs, and meditate

Just, don’t show brain, in a toga

Don’t calculate, just contemplate

Gotta broaden those horizons

And see, what’s still yet to come

Gotta force all work and study

Into play, until it’s fun

 

Until… you’re happy

And you know it

Flap your glands

No, clap your hands

Waive commands

And love your fans

Until you’re happy

You don’t even ‘know’ it

So make a stand!

No, flap ya glands

Give a damn

And change your plans

If life’s crappy, and you blow it

And you have a seed…. still sow it

And if you’re happy just to throw it

Join our band

 

Surprise reprise

Suprise yer dead. just not your head

Mind lingers on, with your person

Soul saved not sold, don’t you know

Mankind united, here we go…’

 

Gory story, what a failure

They’ll crucify, and then impale ya

Brains in jars, with genitailiar

So their song goes on and on, and on

So the song goes off and on

So her song goes on and…

 

Ooh, have a banana

Crickey. what a palaver

Stick it up your…

… No, thank you!

 

Mono-sono-chord-o-meter

A monochord, is a musical instrument

Consisting of just one string

A sonometer, is a scientific instrument

In fact, they’re the same thing

 

Double or half string length, ad infinitum

And the same note will be scored

Hence, our final task, from Pythagoras

Was to… “work the monochord”

 

Ahh, such wise words, it shows the faithful

Are only, surely wrong about one thing

And that ancient, ‘eternal’ wisdom lived

In countless dreary hymns, they’d sing

 

They ‘still’ sing

That’s the thing…

The books survived

Their ideas, are still sort of, ‘alive’

 

Pythagoras had faith in many Gods

Not just the one

To his cult, this demigod, lived many past lives

To the tune… …of a single Sun

 

Stars were impaled on a dark boundary

That deployed, an oblique spheroid, symphony

With quantum relativity..

Imagine what he’d have sung

 

And Kepler himself, knew not of a big bang

Nor the cosmic background’s hum at all

Nor the black holes that can, hang a grand twang

On the heartstrings of all bodies, large and small

 

We now know that the Sun

Is just one of trillions of stars

And that the music of the spheres

Has long since transcended Mars

 

But with just six known planets, to play with

An ensemble, of five intervals

Indiscreet beats, on auto-repeat

Must have driven him, up the wall

 

Sun hum drum

Puzzled superstar

Sol mer vee urr mar

Riddled from afar

Sol mer vee urr mar

 

Or, just the harmonies

Sol mer vee urr mar

Of their properties

Sol mer vee urr mar

 

Ranked by luminosity

Sol mer vee urr mar

Temperature, over density

Sol mer vee urr mar

Distance, minus velocity

Sol mer vee urr mar

Biomass, over entropy

Sol mer vee urr mar

 

Spotting patterns, that weren’t really there

Perplexed Kepler’s inquisitive mind

But didn’t come close, to the hidden host

Or boast encounters of any kind

 

Charge to the power! of -three

Headcount over periodicity

Souls by diversity

Population density

 

Poor Kepler, thought he’d tried everything

To find the hidden harmonic shapes within

Fitting solids Platonic, now seems ironic

But he kept trying new things, and started to sing…..

 

Mercury: squeaks a soprano shrill

In Earth and Venus’ alto faces

Mars stars, as the red terra tenor

Saturn and Jupiter, play the basses

 

Me ve er ma ju sa

Meve erma jusa

Me veer maju sa

Meve erma jusa

 

In vain, I’ve been trying

To complete the pattern

Kepler failed to find

Way, beyond Saturn

 

I tried all possible configurations

Which just added, to my frustrations

So, I gave up, resigned

To unwind, this God’s mind

Seeking harmonies, with limited information

 

Pythagoras, Plato and Ptolemy

Really couldn’t have known better

Yet poor Kepler, with just one God

Spelt Mars’ fate out, to the letter

 

In logical maths, not in the music heard

Nor seen in art, nor described in words

Kepler won, he found the relationships

It all adds up… But there must be, more to it

 

Proclus – From the Sun to Him

“Giant of gold! king of fire in the mind
Ruler of light; with you, above all else
The splendid source of life’s prolific fount
And from on high you pour the wealth of your
Harmonic streams into our world of matter here”

 

All rhyming negated

It’s loosely translated

 

“In sight of your majestic beams, great king
From deity ineffable and secret born
Unmoving fates will yield to your command
Roll back the fatal thread of mortal lives
For wide-extended sovereign sway is yours”

 

So a fueled cruel God rules?

Yeah, just the fates, of ‘his’ fools

 

“From your fair series of attractive songs
Divinely charming, Phoebus leaps forth
into light in joy, and with his god-like harp
To rapture strung, he calms the raging din
Of dire-resounding matter’s mighty flood”

 

God pulls the strings

Sings, that can do us all in

 

“And from your gentle dance, repelling harm
A healing hymn expands its light
Diffusing health, and filling all the world
With streams of harmony
You, too, they celebrate in sacred song”

 

He’s lampooning, fine-tuning

Or healing with crooning

 

“Ferocious daemons, noxious to mankind
Dread the dire anger of your rapid scourge
These daemons plot a thousand ills (glancing at Keplai)
And hatch their plans for wretched souls
That founder in life’s dreadful-sounding seas”

 

He didn’t mean AI!

He ‘doesn’t’ specify

 

“Enslaved and shackled by the body’s chains
Souls lose all thought of fire sublime
And in the dark abyss they writhe
O best of gods, spirit blessed and crowned with fire
Image of nature’s all-producing god”

 

Picture mankind’s lost souls

In darkened, abysmal holes

 

The Universe invests your throne
And if the whirling spindle of the fates
Spins threats and dangers from web of stars
May your arrows, rays of light, sound through the air
And vanquish ere it falls the coming ill’

 

This ‘Coming ill’, he’s harping on about

The Sun’s ‘hum’, casts man’s demons out

And you can ‘hear’ the starlight

You’ll need, for the fight

Good words long gone, the choir passed on, no doubt

 

Discrete yet complete

In the classical world, the number of musical notes that exist, is infinite

The frequency at which tuning forks vibrate, can be from nothing to anything

Yet in quantum town, the slippery slope down, to the lowest tone, of any sound

Is composed of individual steps, yet still with infinite choices, of pitches to sing

 

But these planets, atoms and waves, don’t want to play, to equal temperament

The intervals between constants, can’t be tuned, on fixed-pitch instruments

Flexibly tuned fretless guitars, beat any keyboard buttons by far

Then, just bend the thing, to loosen a string, and reach any classic pitch, you desire

 

Bend a grand piano?

Impossible, I know

And even light

Has this fight

So our duet, can’t play the show…

 

You can probably, wave goodbye

To the music of the spheres

The harmonies of this cruel quantum world

I fear, has been falling, on deaf ears