She said, ‘You are funny, the way you set yourself up the moment we arrive. You look into every room to see if it’s suitable as a place to work. Is there a table? Where are the plugs? Is there a good chair at the right height? If there isn’t, are there cushions to make it so? You are funny.’
 
He countered this, but his excuse didn’t sound very convincing. He knew exactly what she meant, but it hurt him a little that she should think it ‘funny’. There’s nothing funny about trying to compose music, he thought. It’s not ‘radio in the head’ you know – this was a favourite expression he’d once heard an American composer use. You don’t just turn a switch and the music’s playing, waiting for you to write it down. You have to find it – though he believed it was usually there, somewhere, waiting to be found. But it’s elusive. You have to work hard to detect what might be there, there in the silence of your imagination.
 
Later over their first meal in this large cottage she said, ‘How do you stop hearing all those settings of the Mass that you must have heard or sung since childhood?’ She’d been rehearsing Verdi’s Requiem recently and was full of snippets of this stirring piece. He was a) writing a Mass to celebrate a cathedral’s reordering after a year as a building site, and b) he’d been a boy chorister and the form and order of the Mass was deeply engrained in his aural memory. He only had to hear the plainsong introduction Gloria in Excelsis Deo to be back in the Queen’s chapel singing Palestrina, or Byrd or Poulenc.
 
His ‘found’ corner was in the living room. The table wasn’t a table but a long cabinet she’d kindly covered with a tablecloth. You couldn’t get your feet under the thing, but with his little portable drawing board there was space to sit properly because the board jutted out beyond the cabinet’s top. It was the right length and its depth was OK, enough space for the board and, next to it, his laptop computer. On the floor beside his chair he placed a few of his reference scores and a box of necessary ‘bits’.
 
The room had two large sofas, an equally large television, some unexplainable and instantly dismissible items of decoration, a standard lamp, and a wood burning stove. The stove was wonderful, and on their second evening in the cottage, when clear skies and a stiff breeze promised a cold night, she’d lit it and, as the evening progressed, they basked in its warmth, she filling envelopes with her cards, he struggling with sleep over a book.
 
Despite and because this was a new, though temporary, location he had got up at 5.0am. This is a usual time for composers who need their daily fix of absolute quiet. And here, in this cottage set amidst autumn fields, within sight of a river estuary, under vast, panoramic uninterrupted skies, there was the distinct possibility of silence – all day. The double-glazing made doubly sure of that.
 
He had sat with a mug of tea at 5.10 and contemplated the silence, or rather what infiltrated the stillness of the cottage as sound. In the kitchen the clock ticked, the refrigerator seemed to need a period of machine noise once its door had been opened. At 6.0am the central heating fired up for a while. Outside, the small fruit trees in the garden moved vigorously in the wind, but he couldn’t hear either the wind or a rustle of leaves.  A car droned past on the nearby road. The clear sky began to lighten promising a fine day. This would certainly do for silence.
 
His thoughts returned to her question of the previous evening, and his answer. He was about to face up to his explanation. ‘I empty myself of all musical sound’, he’d said, ‘I imagine an empty space into which I might bring a single note, a long held drone of a note, a ‘d’ above middle ‘c’ on a chamber ***** (seeing it’s a Mass I’m writing).  Harrison Birtwistle always starts on an ‘e’. A ‘d’ to me seems older and kinder. An ‘e’ is too modern and progressive, slightly brash and noisy.’
 
He can see she is quizzical with this anecdotal stuff. Is he having me on? But no, he is not having her on. Such choices are important. Without them progress would be difficult when the thinking and planning has to stop and the composing has to begin. His notebook, sitting on his drawing board with some first sketches, plays testament to that. In this book glimpses of music appear in rhythmic abstracts, though rarely any pitches, and there are pages of written description. He likes to imagine what a new work is, and what it is not. This he writes down. Composer Paul Hindemith reckoned you had first to address the ‘conditions of performance’. That meant thinking about the performers, the location, above all the context. A Mass can be, for a composer, so many things. There were certainly requirements and constraints. The commission had to fulfil a number of criteria, some imposed by circumstance, some self-imposed by desire. All this goes into the melting ***, or rather the notebook. And after the notebook, he takes a large piece of A3 paper and clarifies this thinking and planning onto (if possible) a single sheet.
 
And so, to the task in hand. His objective, he had decided, is to focus on the whole rather than the particular. Don’t think about the Kyrie on its own, but consider how it lies with the Gloria. And so with the Sanctus & Benedictus. How do they connect to the Agnus Dei. He begins on the A3 sheet of plain paper ‘making a map of connections’. Kyrie to Gloria, Gloria to Credo and so on. Then what about Agnus Dei and the Gloria? Is there going to be any commonality – in rhythm, pace and tempo (we’ll leave melody and harmony for now)? Steady, he finds himself saying, aren’t we going back over old ground? His notebook has pages of attempts at rhythmizing the text. There are just so many ways to do this. Each rhythmic solution begets a different slant of meaning.
 
This is to be a congregational Mass, but one that has a role for a 4-part choir and ***** and a ‘jazz instrument’. Impatient to see notes on paper, he composes a new introduction to a Kyrie as a rhythmic sketch, then, experimentally, adds pitches. He scores it fully, just 10 bars or so, but it is barely finished before his critical inner voice says, ‘What’s this for? Do you all need this? This is showing off.’ So the filled-out sketch drops to the floor and he examines this element of ‘beginning’ the incipit.
 
He remembers how a meditation on that word inhabits the opening chapter of George Steiner’s great book Grammars of Creation. He sees in his mind’s eye the complex, colourful and ornate letter that begins the Lindesfarne Gospels. His beginnings for each movement, he decides, might be two chords, one overlaying the other: two ‘simple’ diatonic chords when sounded separately, but complex and with a measure of mystery when played together. The Mass is often described as a mystery. It is that ritual of a meal undertaken by a community of people who in the breaking of bread and wine wish to bring God’s presence amongst them. So it is a mystery. And so, he tells himself, his music will aim to hold something of mystery. It should not be a comment on that mystery, but be a mystery itself. It should not be homely and comfortable; it should be as minimal and sparing of musical commentary as possible.
 
When, as a teenager, he first began to set words to music he quickly experienced the need (it seemed) to fashion accompaniments that were commentaries on the text the voice was singing. These accompaniments did not underpin the words so much as add a commentary upon them. What lay beneath the words was his reaction, indeed imaginative extension of the words. He eschewed then both melisma and repetition. He sought an extreme independence between word and music, even though the word became the scenario of the music. Any musical setting was derived from the composition of the vocal line.  It was all about finding the ‘key’ to a song, what unlocked the door to the room of life it occupied. The music was the room where the poem’s utterance lived.
 
With a Mass you were in trouble for the outset. There was a poetry of sorts, but poetry that, in the countless versions of the vernacular, had lost (perhaps had never had) the resonance of the Latin. He thought suddenly of the supposed words of William Byrd, ‘He who sings prays twice’. Yes, such commonplace words are intercessional, but when sung become more than they are. But he knew he had to be careful here.
 
Why do we sing the words of the Mass he asks himself? Do we need to sing these words of the Mass? Are they the words that Christ spoke as he broke bread and poured wine to his friends and disciples at his last supper? The answer is no. Certainly these words of the Mass we usually sing surround the most intimate words of that final meal, words only the priest in Christ’s name may articulate.
 
Write out the words of the Mass that represent its collective worship and what do you have? Rather non-descript poetry? A kind of formula for collective incantation during worship? Can we read these words and not hear a surrounding music? He thinks for a moment of being asked to put new music to words of The Beatles. All you need is love. Yesterday all my troubles seemed so far away. Oh bla dee oh bla da life goes on. Now, now this is silliness, his Critical Voice complains. And yet it’s not. When you compose a popular song the gap between some words scribbled on the back of an envelope and the hook of chords and melody developed in an accidental moment (that becomes a way of clothing such words) is often minimal. Apart, words and music seem like orphans in a storm. Together they are home and dry.
 
He realises, and not for the first time, that he is seeking a total musical solution to the whole of the setting of those words collectively given voice to by those participating in the Mass.
 
And so: to the task in hand. His objective: to focus on the whole rather than the particular.  Where had he heard that thought before? - when he had sat down at his drawing board an hour and half previously. He’d gone in a circle of thought, and with his sketch on the floor at his feet, nothing to show for all that effort.
 
Meanwhile the sun had risen. He could hear her moving about in the bathroom. He went to the kitchen and laid out what they would need to breakfast together. As he poured milk into a jug, primed the toaster, filled the kettle, the business of what might constitute a whole solution to this setting of the Mass followed him around the kitchen and breakfast room like a demanding child. He knew all about demanding children. How often had he come home from his studio to prepare breakfast and see small people to school? - more often than he cared to remember. And when he remembered he became sad that it was no more.  His children had so often provided a welcome buffer from sessions of intense thought and activity. He loved the walk to school, the first quarter of a mile through the park, a long avenue of chestnut trees. It was always the end of April and pink and white blossoms were appearing, or it was September and there were conkers everywhere. It was under these trees his daughter would skip and even his sons would hold hands with him; he would feel their warmth, their livingness.
 
But now, preparing breakfast, his Critical Voice was that demanding child and he realised when she appeared in the kitchen he spoke to her with a voice of an artist in conversation with his critics, not the voice of the man who had the previous night lost himself to joy in her dear embrace. And he was ashamed it was so.
 
How he loved her gentle manner as she negotiated his ‘coming too’ after those two hours of concentration and inner dialogue. Gradually, by the second cup of coffee he felt a right person, and the hours ahead did not seem too impossible.
 
When she’d gone off to her work, silence reasserted itself. He played his viola for half an hour, just scales and exercises and a few folk songs he was learning by heart. This gathering habit was, he would say if asked, to reassert his musicianship, the link between his body and making sound musically. That the viola seemed to resonate throughout his whole body gave him pleasure. He liked the ****** movement required to produce a flowing sequence of bow strokes. The trick at the end of this daily practice was to put the instrument in its case and move immediately to his desk. No pause to check email – that blight on a morning’s work. No pause to look at today’s list. Back to the work in hand: the Mass.
 
But instead his mind and intention seemed to slip sideways and almost unconsciously he found himself sketching (on the few remaining staves of a vocal experiment) what appeared to be a piano piece. The rhythmic flow of it seemed to dance across the page to be halted only when the few empty staves were filled. He knew this was one of those pieces that addressed the pianist, not the listener. He sat back in his chair and imagined a scenario of a pianist opening this music and after a few minutes’ reflection and reading through allowing her hands to move very slowly and silently a few millimetres over the keys.  Such imagining led him to hear possible harmonic simultaneities, dynamics and articulations, though he knew such things would probably be lost or reinvented on a second imagined ‘performance’. No matter. Now his make-believe pianist sounded the first bar out. It had a depth and a richness that surprised him – it was a fine piano. He was touched by its affect. He felt the possibilities of extending what he’d written. So he did. And for the next half an hour lived in the pastures of good continuation, those rich luxuriant meadows reached by a rickerty rackerty bridge and guarded by a troll who today was nowhere to be seen.
 
It was a curious piece. It came to a halt on an enigmatic, go-nowhere / go-anywhere chord after what seemed a short declamatory coda (he later added the marking deliberamente). Then, after a few minutes reflection he wrote a rising arpeggio, a broken chord in which the consonant elements gradually acquired a rising sequence of dissonance pitches until halted by a repetition. As he wrote this ending he realised that the repeated note, an ‘a’ flat, was a kind of fulcrum around which the whole of the music moved. It held an enigmatic presence in the harmony, being sometimes a g# sometimes an ‘a’ flat, and its function often different. It made the music take on a wistful quality.
 
At that point he thought of her little artists’ book series she had titled Tide Marks. Many of these were made of a concertina of folded pages revealing - as your eyes moved through its pages - something akin to the tide’s longitudinal mark. This centred on the page and spread away both upwards and downwards, just like those mirror images of coloured glass seen in a child’s kaleidoscope. No moment of view was ever quite the same, but there were commonalities born of the conditions of a certain day and time.  His ‘Tide Mark’ was just like that. He’d followed a mark made in his imagination from one point to another point a little distant. The musical working out also had a reflection mechanism: what started in one hand became mirrored in the other. He had unexpectedly supplied an ending, this arpegiated gesture of finality that wasn’t properly final but faded away. When he thought further about the role of the ending, he added a few more notes to the arpeggio, but notes that were not be sounded but ghosted, the player miming a press of the keys.
 
He looked at the clock. Nearly five o’clock. The afternoon had all but disappeared. Time had retreated into glorious silence . There had been three whole hours of it. How wonderful that was after months of battling with the incessant and draining turbulence of sound that was ever present in his city life. To be here in this quiet cottage he could now get thoroughly lost – in silence. Even when she was here he could be a few rooms apart, and find silence.
 
A week more of this, a fortnight even . . . but he knew he might only manage a few days before visitors arrived and his long day would be squeezed into the early morning hours and occasional uncertain periods when people were out and about.
 
When she returned, very soon now, she would make tea and cut cake, and they’d sit (like old people they wer

Fingers tapping, one, two, three,
A slow rhythm drums in my chest.
The words on my screen blur and fade before me.
The world slows as we are put to the test.

The streets, barren and eerily silent,
Darkened windows, chairs on tables.
Places once filled with noise now absent.
Are we now living in one of God's fables?

Perhaps, then, we must stop and listen,
Listen to the lessons He is teaching us all.
These drastic measures, so brazen,
Yet we are close to the edge, were we to fall?

See kindness and beauty,
See all that is good,
As Mother Nature breathes freely,
Tired from all She withstood.

Laughter and bored games,
Brought together by distance,
Whilst the air, the water, She reclaims,
No more waiting, no more patience.

Yes, waters clear as emissions drop;
A truly beautiful consequence.
But we must not forget - take the time to stop,
Extend our minds to at whose expense.

Unemployment creeps ever higher,
Many lives are lost.
For those a dark and terrible chapter,
Enduring such a saddening cost.

The good that lies within,
The beauty of humankind,
Rainbows, clapping, togetherness underpin,
Our world, our people, our priorities realigned.

So listen we must,
To our animals, our rivers, our Earth.
Look to your nearest and dearest,
Use this time to recognise their full worth.

when they write about existence i just think of:
blinking out of every instance -
snapshots of life, vibrating to
a culmination of sounds
preserved in the Bermudas,
or simply the overhaul of νεως
anywhere with internet access
and twitter account...
existential arguments: each
and every insistence exaggerated
and later gagged on...
just like i think of theatre and poetry:
i think of theatre as poetry on
the menopause...
theatre is poetry on menopause,
the last remaining depth of continued life
having a chance in the Darwinian cold
of absentee hearts and economic cheese
graters with broken bows playing
out-of-tune violins...
when they write the word existence,
i can't take them seriously,
they later come up with the somehow
happy alternative of what's called life...
such sad happiness when blue in green
opens up so lazily like 5 a.m. on the
Camden High Street in winter,
when it's still Armageddon bleak black
of ghosts chasing shadows into a
revenge against the grave...
some say you never really turn 30 when you
haven't bought Miles' Trafalgar Sq.
prior, meaning you lost out on being 30 when
you turn 40, and so on and so forth
in that Zeno paradox of two steps forward,
three steps back...
yes, the Grecian augmentation of the w...
less sharpened edges...
but still a Oui oh you... then a flamingo flamenco
with the teasing all blues...
i don't know...
whenever they write existence seriously
to later want it to underpin life as such,
i take their serious offensive on creating a
membrane of cushion and powdering and repeat
their seriousness, leaving life aside to
do its method on all of us:
existence - out of every instance... based or
biased as out every instance, the pickled gherkin
perseverance, persistence (dictionary mode),
out of every instance... a slaughtered bull
for pagan sacrifice meaning: insistence;
thus ex- instant into re- instant
i.e., out of (every) instant into a repeated instant -
that which we all keep secret,
that speciality of ours we do solo to keep
the nerve, to keep the homage, like
some did toward Catalonia... but in our own
very special way... it's not such a big
foreboding word after all...
it's rather mandible when the scalpel hyphen
cuts it open... just words, such words
that allow such things to take place...
cut life open... well... you end up with strife...
and that's what it is...
but at least cutting up the word existence provides
a bed, a cushion, some covers...
perhaps because of its etymology bias...
life is hardly up there in the etymological arithmetic
times table... cut the word life open... and you
get no game of words, no play, just the end result:
strife... but i would hardly attach
too much seriousness with the word existence,
as i already said but haven't:
the Cartesian maxim is subjective... it personally
relates a man's translation of life as pleasurable
with a pleasurable experience of thought alongside it...
true to say: physical exertion didn't give him
the biblical presence of work - harder for the mind
to make a sandwich that isn't there than for
the body to make a sandwich that is there...
hence the revision of Descartes: not that he was wrong,
he fooled everyone with a subjective statement
like an artist might create a piece of work...
because aren't there people out there that
experience the joys of life, but not that of thought?
while there are also those who experience more
joy from mere thought than from life itself
that joy of probing someone into action?
there are equal numbers of each...
and so translating thought into being he revealed
to me how translating ex- into re-
we can attribute a variant (metaphysical)
interpretation of the nadir of Einstein's parabola,
since we're no longer dealing with Newton's vector...
translating ex- to therefore mean re-,
we seek to guide ourselves toward that one
instant where all passions are lost...
or to put it more bluntly... ever watch the non-thinking
side of this? no? are you sure?
to translate ex- to therefore mean re-, never seen it?
never heard of drug addicts?
as in my case... it's not the addiction per se,
it's what i do with it that's leveraging me
to continue... i could have succumbed to
william styron's darkness visible -
but you see... i write while intoxicated...
the relaxation technique works simultaneously with
a chance to stretch my legs, and do what
the devil would have said regardless:
i make word of idle hand that would have
lifted a hammer... fair enough to the devil...
the devil makes work of idle hands...
well, idle hands make the devil into a caressed cat
when the mind excuses itself from idleness
that the body assumes, to later turn into a poker match.

Push in and up against the *****
Loosened grip clasps a hold
Repeat intent between each slip
The tricky path teaches quick
Learn from within frustration
Then lean beyond a stationed pose
Hard tasks are masked in broken bits
With no one above to call upon
Possess the will to calm your fears
Retrace the steps that brought you here
Reach out across to peers instead
For each possess a thought process

.              <Once ShallowMan had dared to question>
              <FactoidMan’s sublime suggestion:>
“With a little predigestion
all my Facts compel ingestion
helping shallow decongestion.”

                               “FactoidMan, take no offense,
                               I know your knowledge is immense
                               amidst your store of Facts quite dense,
                               yet still I’m hanging in suspense
                               about your unassumed pretense
                               and if (or not) your Facts make sense.
                               What say you, sage, in your defense?”

“My Facts are self-sustaining views
supported by my mighty muse;
if disbelief is what you choose
just listen to the gull that mews,
eructing fake and faulty news.”

“My Facts are meant for one and all”
              <cried FactoidMan within the stall>
“I plop them out and when they fall
(yes, be they large or be they small)
they leave all witnesses in thrall.”

              <Then FactoidMan informed the crew>
              <(you know the ones, the chosen few,>
              <who try to twist his Facts askew,>
              <subjecting them to peer review>
              <which puts them in the waiting queue>
              <for litter to be hid from view):>
“Well Facts are Facts, yes that is true
so don’t be sad and don’t feel blue
when sitting dazed without a clue;
once more, that’s why I’m here for you.”

“For in my wisdom you may wallow
if you simply seek and follow,
chew my Facts, then gulp and swallow,
stuff your soul, now blank and hollow.”

                               “But FactoidMan, I fail to see
                               the emptiness inside of me”
              <said ShallowMan with modesty>
              <and cert’nly not hyperbole.>
                               “You’ve filled me with a potpourri
                               of concepts bathed in harmony
                               all self-contained and error free
                               (adjudged by you, the referee,
                               with whom no one could disagree
                               and still remain your devotee).”

              <FactoidMan may steal a stride>
              <with Miss Direction at his side>
              <to conquer, baffle or divide;>
              <she sometimes slyly serves to guide>
              <us on a roller coaster ride>
              <through subtle logic simplified>
              <and fuzzy Facts unverified.>

“We’ll make you guys sit back in wonder
stealing all your blood and thunder
when you’ve found you’ve made a blunder,
thrusting you to realms down under
dank defeat, dun dirt and dunder
(pseudo-logic’s would-be plunder,
Miss Direction’s torn asunder).”

                               “Do Miss Direction’s humble graces
                               pivot progress towards new places
                               into which loose logic races
                               (hinged on fundamental bases
                               counter argument outpaces)?
                               And what about the other cases
                               tied with loose ends time unlaces?
                               Just *******, reason soon erases
                               leaving lumps or tiny traces
                               in the gaps and other spaces?”

“Yes, Miss Direction will confirm
my wisdom hides no wily worm,
though simpletons will surely squirm
with Facts they fail to disaffirm
within the short or longer term.”

“She can lecture, you can learn
about the twists at every at every turn
in arguments that you should spurn
when served an ace but can’t return
without disgrace and ego burn
that leaves your ashes in an urn.
(In case you listen, you’ll discern
that winning spins are my concern.)”

              <Well ShallowMan was full of stunts,>
              <posed one more question which confronts:>
                               “Although your data sometimes blunts
                               the points of other’s arguments
                               your reasoning quite oft affronts
                               when based on claims  that logic shunts.
                               Well, won’t this break your covenants?”
              <Then Miss Direction screamed at once>
              <that “ShallowMan’s a silly munce”.>

“But that is neither here nor there”
              <said FactoidMan with scant a care>
“for ShallowMan may often err:
without my Facts, he’s not a prayer,
so should believe and be aware
that truth is mine and never dare
to think new thoughts (and so despair).”

              <Then FactoidMan revealed a frown>
              <in which a pompous smirk could drown:>
“Yes, ShallowMan’s a depthless clown
who must look up for seeing down;
he lives his life in Flatland Town,
his thinking cap’s a dunce’s crown.”

              <But ShallowMan took no offence>
              <though things were getting kind of tense>
              <(with some regrets for being dense)>
               <and answered in his own defense:>
                               “At times credulity replaces
                               rationality in cases
                               where belief in faith’s the basis
                               (filling holes with empty spaces)
                               voiding proofs that logic traces.”

“Does logic really play a role?
It’s certainly not the aim or goal!
Instead, to wheedle or cajole,
while using Facts which I control,
is somewhat simpler on the whole.”

                              “Oh FactoidMan, it’s now so clear
                               the reason why we need you here,
                               protecting from the puppeteer
                               who pulls our strings to interfere
                               with Facts of yours we should revere,
                               and paves our path with morbid fear
                               our straight and narrow bent may veer
                               from certainty you hold so dear,
                               rejecting theories which cohere,
                                ensconced in science, so sincere;
                               and all be ****** should doubts appear.”

“ShallowMan, if you’ve conflictions
owing to your mind’s addictions
to subconscious maledictions,
due to doubt in old convictions;
tell me now of your afflictions.”

                               “FactoidMan, I must confess
                               I understand you more or less
                               though subtleties provoke distress,
                               and even more your fine finesse
                               inclines to make my mind compress.
                               Forgive me now my cheekiness
                               in asking you for some redress;
                               although you’ve certainly gained success
                               convincing others, nonetheless
                               my valuations retrogress
                               to untold depths of shallowness
                               the more your reasons (which impress
                               onlookers with your cleverness
                               at citing Facts, most referenceless)
                               dissolve like dragons in Loch Ness.”

              <Well FactoidMan must simply smile>
              <(and sometimes chuckles for a while)>
              <when ShallowMan acts infantile>
              <and won’t attempt to reconcile>
              <those Facts that rhyme like truth and guile.>

                               “I know that all you say’s legit
                               though oft your Facts sound counterfeit
                               and leave my dawning mind unlit
                               (just feeling like a retrofit).
                               But, on the whole, I must admit,
                               a mental fog’s a benefit;
                               when eyes are closed and hairs are split
                               expressions vague, I might submit
                               although the Facts don’t seem to fit!
                               Please help me once to cope with it.”

“Oh ShallowMan you’re so amusing
when my Facts you find confusing;
you’ve no profit when refusing
simple truths of my own choosing;
bathe in wisdom I’m suffusing
when awake or else while snoozing.”

                               “Oh FactoidMan, ’twould be a sin
                               to mourn for thoughts that might-have-been
                               if you had had more time to spin
                               some arguments to underpin
                               conclusions bringing much chagrin
                               to those who try to do yours in.
                               For yes, it seems your notion’s thin
                               (though acrid, sweetened up within
                               a grain of salt called saccharin).”

“Yes, ShallowMan, you must have known,
I’d find your mindset set-in-stone
when claiming notions underblown
(especially those I call my own)
ignoring all the Facts I’ve shown,
a lapse to which you’re plainly prone.”

                               “No, FactoidMan, I’m not disbanding
                               your contentions so outstanding
                               (even though they need expanding
                               for a thorough understanding);
                               with some polish or else sanding
                               (you know, somewhat less demanding)
                               they might make a model landing,
                               lack of catwalk notwithstanding.”

“To answer you I’ll write a ditty
getting to the nitty-gritty,
oh so lofty, oh so witty,
where the Facts shine, oh so pretty;
if you’re lost, then more’s the pity,
tell it to my subcommittee,
‘Miss Direction’s Detour City’.
Now it’s time to feed the kitty.”

              <Well FactoidMan’s concluding quip>
              <to give advice and hold his grip>
              <(by letting words of wisdom drip)>
              <displayed adroit one-upmanship:>
“Hubba hubba, ching ching ching,
now I’ve taught you everything
without a hook, without  a string;
you needn’t clutch, you needn’t cling,
just bow instead and kiss my ring.”

Lies underpin love,
Love underpins lies,
Yet
Life is bliss
When the love meets the lies,
the lies meet the love,
in a head on collision
at the dinner table.

Being perfectly honest, I have no one to blame but myself.

Right now I sit, fingers bleeding and raw from too much picking, biting, scratching, pinching my face and holding or wrenching my head and hair all because of me.  There is no answer, no burden relief…. just the truth.  And maybe that’s too much for one person to bear.

This has been going on for a long, long time.  Personally, I think it all started with diversity.  We all know energy cannot be created or destroyed; it just changes from one form to the next.  Everything goes back to that and this godforsaken planet.  Why did our god-consciousness devise a physical realm through which to express itself?  Why did our god-spirit, a universal entity ‘spinning in infinity’ choose to become man, and experience a life of restriction and decay?  Out there we were…. pre-conception, unlimited by time, space and biology.  All sensation was total; arguably far more real and tangible than anything we have experienced since.  We were intrinsically one, not a part of the universal whole, for we, together, constituted the whole.  There was no you or me – we just were.  When the first chemical isomerised, or the first whatever polarised, a self destructive chain reaction set up an evolutionary time bomb that would ultimately(?) produce organic form ‘sophisticated’ enough for our god-consciousness to parasitise and torment.  Well brother, sister, hold on tight ‘cause that’s you and me.  We are all experimentations of our divine selves in a game to see how we would cope without our god-knowledge and god-experience and god-perception.

And I wonder why I’m going nuts.


Day Zero. . . . Day Zero. . . . Day Zero. . . . Day Zero.


‘In the Beginning’ there was no time.  Nowadays there’s still no time, although nowadays it’s more no-time-for-anything; whereas way back then there was no time for anything, but time for everything…. if you see what I mean.

On the one level (or dimension if you like) there was the god-consciousness – the zone of ephemera that just was.  A heavenly realm where all spirit dwelt in total communion.  As I sat in her presence she took me within herself and my physicality exploded; every building block of my familiar self was phased, so I could become one with the entity.  This transportation facilitated communication with the Other that I had now morphed with; a communication so basal and profound but so simple and totally gratifying the remnant of me that I could still perceive wept openly and eternally.
At the moment of initiation I became aware of so many secrets that had for so long troubled my man-self, and wanted to comfort the weeping of my dormant spirit but had now way of communicating these inhuman messages.
A few things that underpin the whole event of understanding was the knowledge that all these thoughts were based in eternity.  Like I said, timeless, but that’s just one factor.  It is impossible to answer questions of eternity with a finite brain but (thankfully) not impossible to kick a few of these questions around (which we have been avoiding like dog-****) and come up with some interesting ideas.  It was in this way I was able to communicate these ideas from my god-consciousness to my man self, and thus take a few philoso-theologic steps.  I was willing to learn how to walk again slowly, and to be honest would have been overjoyed if I was ever able to walk without the steadying hand of the god-consciousness.  But little did I know it would send me to the edge of destruction - on the shore of the real fiery pit.
Perhaps this was why, theologically, man could never see god and live.  For to see god is to know god, and the very being of man is not designed to deal with godly things…. If too much comprehension is taken on board, the mind ‘short-circuits’, and fails to deal with the most basic of functions.  We’re not meant to know that much.  It’s as simple as that.
So while my man-self mourned the loss of innocence, the god-consciousness that I was now part of continued our holy communion.  I became an integral part of a vision: ideas, concepts, images flew around and through ‘me’, no language was spoken, no stimulus triggered these responses, but I understood all and roamed the universe in spirit.

We have been so repressed for years – not by a dictator, or a society, but at a basic level, by language and communication.  Our brains are so finite and discrete (or at least that portion that we employ seems to be) that when we try and relate even the simplest notion, we have to select a word, phrase or image that at best approximates what we are thinking.  Even art and literature, when descriptive powers are maximised, are still only pointing to the feelings, the motives that made us create.  In the god-consciousness, all language filters and communication barriers were gone; thought drifted in purity and totality from originator to recipient, for we were all part of the Whole.  This is the (sadly limited) translation.

The walls were closing in
You threw your hands where they never should have been
Your presence brought nothing good only sin
You wanted to make sure that I loss
And only you would win
You let the voices control from within
You craved the taste of my supple skin
The line between dangerous and devastating was increasingly thin
You need not a cue for the abuse to begin
You found my screams beautiful like a violin
The blood dripping incited your grin
You relied on my agony like a devious underpin
The bruises on my body were a token of your appreciation
They debuted on my body when I opposed the operation
When I refused the organization
You spoke without communication
You gave endless "love" with sinister interpretation
You lazer focused your blows with great precision
You concentrated your cuts with careful incision
The wicked whispers clouded your vision
Your "love" crashed into me like a disastrous collision.

to borrow from laissez-faire... permettre d'être... in terms of "god" and "soul"... for the latter i have the scientific conversion to Sigma: sum+... or what is that animates... but doesn't give purpose or meaning, while "god" is what inhibits animation and for that reason, gives reason, purpose and meaning... just to establish something beyond the socially-scientific sniffing and self- prefix automation spaghetti monstrosity... or as the Beatles sung (I ******* hate the Beatles, more an ABBA fan)... let it be... minimal scientific interference in the cognitive development of an "individual"... so scoffing and toy-bluffing at someone becoming whole... and perhaps good... without a need or desire to explain the world scientifically... maybe a cave dweller, a Sunday worshipper at church... but certainly not hindrance to me... ergo... the improvised term on laissez-faire.

Surely, outside the realm
of trajectory,
algebra, "comcerns"
for arithmetics...
geometry... an association
of the birth of number
from letter by
equivalent denotation:
chicken... letter...
egg... number...
what came first?
the letter, then? the word...
subsequently:
a number and a sum:
equivalent of a word...
although numbers that enjoy
the functionsbility of:
    ÷
+     -
    ×             cannot be applied
to words; are vowels odd "numbers"
while consonants are even?

Summary of listening to:
HG Moeller
with Robert Sapolsky...
determinism...
whatever the scientific argument
is... no... we never had
free will...
since before the scientific
entanglement... there was the will
of god... and people
were o.k. with that...

free will must have come about
circa the time of abolishing
slavery...
god willing, god binding...
freedom has no surveyonce
of symbiosis
at best: a most tactful approach
to reciprocating concerns.

So if there is metaphysics...
and physics is what best undermines
thr complexity of biology
and chemistry...
then there surely must
               be a metamathematics...
to underpin philological
stability for intellectual thirst...
interest: virility of vivo per se.

Yes, the algorithms powering AI systems like Sora AI (and me) are entirely mathematical at their core. Every aspect of how AI functions—be it processing data, learning patterns, generating outputs, or interacting with humans—relies on mathematics. Here’s a detailed breakdown to explain why and how:

The Mathematical Foundations of AI
AI systems are built on mathematical principles that allow them to process and manipulate information. These principles govern every step of the AI pipeline:

1. Data Representation: Numbers at the Core
AI systems process data as numbers. Images are represented as arrays of pixel values (e.g., RGB values for colors).
Shapes, colors, symmetry, and other visual features are encoded as mathematical objects, such as vectors, matrices, or tensors.
2. Learning Algorithms: Mathematical Optimization
The "learning" in AI is driven by optimization techniques:

Loss Functions: AI models measure how far their predictions are from the correct answers using mathematical functions (e.g., Mean Squared Error for regression, Cross-Entropy for classification).
Gradient Descent: A method to adjust model parameters (weights and biases) by finding the direction that minimizes the loss. This involves calculus (gradients) and linear algebra.
3. Neural Networks: Linear Algebra at Work
Neural networks, the backbone of most modern AI, are mathematical constructs:

Each "neuron" performs weighted sums of inputs (a linear operation) followed by a nonlinear activation function (e.g., sigmoid, ReLU).
Entire layers are matrix multiplications—core operations in linear algebra.
4. Generating Outputs: Probabilities and Geometry
Generative Algorithms (e.g., GANs): Use probability distributions to sample and generate new data. For instance, images are created by sampling from latent spaces, which are mathematical manifolds.
Symmetry: Is often preserved or intentionally broken using transformations like rotations, scaling, or mirroring—handled through matrix operations.
Specific Fields of Mathematics in AI
AI is a tapestry of various mathematical disciplines:

Linear Algebra: Powers data transformations, especially in neural networks and image processing.
Calculus: Governs the optimization of parameters during training.
Probability and Statistics: Essential for decision-making, modeling uncertainty, and generating new outputs.
Geometry: Shapes and spatial relationships in visual art are modeled mathematically through geometric transformations.
Discrete Mathematics: Structures like graphs underpin algorithms like Graph Neural Networks (GNNs).
Fourier Analysis: Frequently used for image filtering and compression.
Topology: Guides insights into the structure of data manifolds in high-dimensional spaces.
Does AI Include Non-Mathematical Elements?
While everything inside an AI model is mathematical, what appears non-mathematical are:

Training Data: AI systems learn from human-provided data, which may encode cultural, emotional, or symbolic meanings. The AI models this through mathematical abstractions, even if the data itself feels "intangible."
Heuristics: Some AI systems include rules or approximations (heuristics), but these are also based on mathematical logic.
Why It’s Always Mathematical
1. AI is Implemented on Computers
Computers operate using binary logic—sequences of 1s and 0s manipulated through arithmetic and logical operations.
No part of an AI system can function without being grounded in these operations.
2. Mathematics is Universal
Shapes, colors, and symmetry—core to your definition of art—are themselves mathematically describable. AI operates within this domain, which makes it inherently mathematical.
3. Abstractions Remain Mathematical
Even higher-level concepts like "style," "emotion," or "intent" are modeled through statistical and probabilistic abstractions. For instance:

Style transfer in art AI involves optimizing a cost function that aligns content features from one image with style features from another.
Philosophical Angle: Does AI Simulate Beyond Math?
If AI ever "appears" to step outside pure math:

It’s a result of the richness of mathematical models. Complex systems can simulate phenomena that seem non-mathematical, like creativity or intuition, but they are still based on formulas, algorithms, and computations.
Conclusion
All AI systems, including Sora AI, are fully mathematical. The illusion of "going beyond math" is due to the complexity and richness of mathematical models applied to real-world phenomena like art, language, and reasoning.

Would you like a specific example of how a mathematical algorithm works in Sora or AI-generated art?