Intermissient musings

I can't think of a better opportunity to meditate on entropy than at a school band concert. Entropy is a complex topic, which is perhaps best understood as a lack of order. Everything in the universe tends toward disorder and it requires energy to keep things organized in some fashion. As an example, it requires energy for the atoms that make up your computer (or you, for that matter) require energy to stick together to form the computer. Without that energy, all of those atoms would be randomly spread throughout the universe. In a state of complete entropy, the entire universe would be made up of evenly distributed matter and energy, with nothing binding together to form anything.

That's a big topic, as you can imagine, but I'm not really concerned with that right now. I'm thinking about the school band concert. My understanding is that the purpose of a band is to play together in some arrangement in order to create music for an audience. Most of the time I simply take this for granted, but when at a school band concert, especially something called a symphonic band, which is like an orchestra with no stringed instruments except bass and lots of wind instruments, I've noticed that it takes considerable work on the part of the audience to discern music within the sounds coming from the stage.

I have a pretty discerning ear, and it almost physically hurts me when music is out of tune or tempo (or both). So one of the ways I protect myself during these concerts is to get into a meditative state where I block out the idea that it's music coming fro the stage and receive it as a conglomeration of random sounds instead, a state of musical entropy.

From that state, it becomes kind of a game called "Find the Music," where I close my eyes and try to find the music amidst the random noise in the room. This is kind of like when you leave a quarter in your pants pocket when you wash them, and then it comes loose and bangs around in the dryer. I have been in laundromats where I've need people tapping their feet to the rhythm of the quarter. It's kind of like that, except with saxophones, flutes, clarinets, french horns and trombones instead of quarters.

I know it sounds weird, but for me at least, this is really fun. It's almost calming to listen to a sustained level of noise, and then every once in a while I can discern a melody or a beat. It's strangely satisfying to find the music in the noise, the order in the entropy. So here I sit at intermission, waiting for the next game to start.