91. A Voyage of Variations – Michelle Ross
The narrator muses on how a “voyage of variations leads… into the diversity of the interior world lying hidden in all things.”
There is a passage within one of my favorite novels, Milan Kundera’s The Book of Laughter and Forgetting, where the narrator uses the musical example of Beethoven’s Opus 111 piano variations to weave together all of the novel’s themes, revealing that the novel itself is in the form of variations. Through this musical lens, the narrator muses on how a “voyage of variations leads… into the diversity of the interior world lying hidden in all things.” He reflects on how variation form allows a composer to go inside the theme “as if down a shaft leading into the interior of the earth.”
I find myself re-reading this novel often, an act of variation I suppose, and Kundera’s words draw me towards the center of Bach’s Sei Solo universe—wherein lies another “voyage of variations,” a single movement called: Ciaconna. The Ciaconna is a theme of eight measures followed by sixty-four variations. It is here that Bach takes us on a journey into the interior, a voyage to the depths of the human soul.
Some view the Ciaconna as an expression of Bach’s grief for his late wife Maria Barbara. The first note of the Ciaconna is missing, and from this breath the pendulum swings, and the theme and variations unfolds without rest for fifteen minutes. I mean this almost literally: Bach wrote only one rest within the entire Ciaconna—one moment of pause before the theme’s final utterance.
The Ciaconna has a “ground bass” which repeats, often hidden, within each variation. There is only one instance where it is missing, when one feels as if the soul has become untethered from the ground. Suddenly, Bach transforms the theme from darkness to lightness, and at the center of the Ciaconna there is a prayer. This voyage of variations finds a way to travel back from the sublime towards its initial theme, which has been transformed.
Thinking on this “voyage of variations,” I have questions. Have I traveled “into the interior”? If so, what have I seen there? Do variations always go forwards, or do they unfold backwards, the theme revealing itself at the end? If I could, as a physicist, look beneath each layer, what would the deepest variation look like? Where do we find the truest essence—within the theme, or in the unending variations and repetitions? Sometimes the theme is so hidden, we may never find it. Could I know another person, or even myself, so intimately that I could explore the infinitude of variations within?
– Michelle Ross
Prompt:
Let us travel down the shaft of, as Milan Kundera puts it, the “infinitude hidden within all things.” Think of a motif: an obsession, a recurring theme within your own life. Something that repeats—maybe a gesture, like tucking your hair behind your ears, the argument you have over and over again with your spouse, or a question you come back to at different stages in your life. Begin to write about it, considering the question of whether you find meaning through repetition, or if the journey takes you farther away.
Flynn
Location: Stuart, Florida
About: It’s the question everyone wants to know the answer to.
Age: 58
It’s Not Always Rhetorical
It’s a question that I keep coming back to throughout my day....I mean my life...throughout my life.
Somewhere, once upon a time, it was an innocent question that I’d ask. We all ask it, in fact. It’s one of the very first thoughts that we all have in our life:
“What?”
That was it.
Natural curiosity.
Then, in a short time, it got more specific.
“What is this?”
“What can I do to get fed again?”
“What did she say?”
Stuff like that.
As more time passed, to the question I found myself adding “the fuck.”
“What the fuck?”
The phrase quickly became a run on sentence, usually by adding a variety of other forms of the word fuck. At times, it was almost sing-songy.
“Scaramouche, Scaramouche, what the fucking Fandango?”
It became more matter of fact, something to say, like, I’d just suck my teeth and say it.
At times I’d question everything, indeed, with that exact same question, as if whatever at that time I happened to be looking at, or listening to, was simply a question to be answered.
I’d look up randomly, scratch my chin, and say it.
Because, why not?
(Incidentally, the question “why not?” is quite a bit jealous of the question
“what the fuck?” which seems to get far more play. Currently, “who the fuck,” “where the fuck,” and “how the fuck” are planning on suing for the right to work.)
Anyway...
It seemed to be catching on. Everybody—every single body—started asking the same question, pretty much in the same way.
“What. The fuck?”
I once saw someone pull the top slice of toast off of their egg salad sandwich. They looked at the mushy egg mixture within, scrunched up their face, and then asked the question.
Seeing that made ME ask the question inside my head. Funny how that works. Every time I hear, “what the fuck,” I kinda think it, even if only for a second. It’s oddly Pavlovian. I wonder if that’s the case with everyone. Ask yourself, if someone says, “what the fuck,” don’t you automatically think, “what the fuck?”
I know I do.
People use the question as if the words are magical, and they could fix whatever that person was hitting at the time. Like they’re applying some kooky tech support instructions:
“Try pounding it with a closed fist and say ‘what the fuck!’ over and over for 5 seconds. See if that works!”
(Weird how that *will* actually work sometimes, when all else has evidently failed)
I’ve seen t-shirts with the question on it. Coffee mugs. In fact, there’s no short supply of all sorts of merchandise that ask the same basic question; some, more eloquently than others.
Apparently, everyone on Earth wants to know the answer to the question.
I’m here to tell you:
I know the answer.
I know the answer to the question.
I, Flynn, know the answer to the question, “what in the actual fuck?”
But....
I’m not sayin’.
(That may even make you ask the question...again...)
Nope.
Not sayin’.
Maybe someday.
Probably not, though.
Have a nice day!