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Tyree and Erik Contend for Mastery of the Cave
Dear Subscriber,
We are nearing the end of posts about The House of Nordquist. The next post will pose some old questions. What is a word? When is a word not a word? And finally, the last of the Nordquist posts will delve into graphic notation—the art of creating images that can be played or sung. After that, stay tuned for some special treats from other writers.
Caves. To oversimplify vastly there are two kinds. In one you find darkness and terror, monsters like Homer’s Cyclops. In the other you discover treasures, perhaps of prehistoric art, the dawning aesthetic of our early ancestors.
And so it is in The House of Nordquist. In one cave the Faustian Erik seeks the forbidden music that will undo all history and the humans who made it. Out of such destruction, his acolyte Paul believes, he intends to make an entirely new reality. To accomplish his appalling musical alchemy Erik will find the most poisonous essence known to him—the ravages of World War II, extracted from the sounds of the body of a Holocaust victim and distilled in the alembic of pure misanthropy. From this he will compose his atrocious symphony.
In the other cave, in a dream of miraculous access, Professor Tyree penetrates the mysteries of the famous caverns of Chavet. In an interior chamber he ponders the startling image of the huge bison with eight legs. “ . . . the ancient artist’s way of indicating the rhythmic running of the beast. I heard the variously pitched drumbeat of the hooves. So here, I thought, is the first octave, long before Pythagoras, resounding in the breasts of the earliest members of our species.”
Two caves. Two musics. One the thunder of war and annihilation. The other the interval and beat buried deep in human origins.
Please consider sharing the source of these caves with your fellow spelunkers. They only have to click on this image:
With every good wish,
Your Reverberant Author
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