all this science i don’t understand

I was going to write about a documentary I watched recently called The Heart Is A Drum Machine. I’m not sure what it’s about — what is music, it persists in asking — but at many points, the people interviewed discuss the physicality of music, the mystery of its origin, the rhythm of the heart. The drummers they interviewed said things like, “the heart and the drum are not two separate things.” (Milton Graves, in that case.)

Then I was going to talk about 4/4 time, which is the most common time signature in western music. It is a heartbeat, as far as I’m concerned. Rock & roll, country, the blues — the vast, vast majority of it is in 4/4 time.

[A brief time signature primer. The top number is beats per measure; the bottom is, uh, the value of 1. So if the denominator is a 4, the quarter note gets one beat. If it's an 8, an eighth note gets one beat. Etc.]

So anyway. 4/4 time, four beats per measure. Four quarters. Building blocks of life, really, to hell with DNA. Or maybe the building blocks of the soul.

This is a quarter note:

Sometimes, though, I need to just–. Stop. Just for a second. This is a quarter rest, the piece of musical notation that means to do just that:

I don’t have anything particularly deep or meaningful to say about the fermata, another piece of musical notation that means “hold.” It goes over a note (I am simplifying drastically; musicians, forgive me). Usually you hold the note until the conductor signals that it’s time to move on, but if you’re on your own, the length of the hold is left up to you. I’ve never seen the sheet music for “Goldfinger,” but I bet you anything there’s a fermata at the end, and Shirley Bassey held it so long when they were recording it that she collapsed when she finally stopped singing.

Mostly I just like the idea of holding on. And anyway, it goes with the kraken.

Both inked at The Code of Conduct, and I would like to say that you really do not realize how often your inner wrist scrapes against stuff until you’ve got a new tattoo there.

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