Having my way with Ulysses

Musemathematics. And you think you’re listening to the etherial.

Be but in tune with yourself, madam, 'tis no matter how high or how low you take it.4:21 pm

Penseroso

Mathematics is not arithmetic.  Is that what you thought?  Oh my darling.  Arithmetic is  2*2/2=1+1.  That’s just juggling numbers.  But please, my delightful, look around you.  Go ahead.  light on something.  That is not a something, that is a collection of number in relationships, in patterns, whispering the universal language.  Some people, eccentrics mostly bless their hearts, think God is an external force.  Now I know my dear that you know better.  God is universal harmony perceived through number.  And if God is this universal harmony perceived through number, and play along, then time is the soul of God.  But don’t listen to me, who am I?  I am only God.  Listen to this:

 

Hear that?  Numbers.  Music is the voice of mathematics.  Go look in the mirror (haven’t we done this before?) and open your mouth wide.  Look in there, all the way in.  Two tiny silky chords, wonderful, more than all others: the human voice.  Vibrate those little silky strings and out comes number.  Double that number and there you are, one octave higher.  Divide it in half, one octave lower.  An octave is the sound of the number 2.  Divide by 3 and you get the musical fifth, the fifth note on the scale.  Bald deaf Pat brought quite flat pad ink.  Quite.  Octaves and fifths love to make love.  Men and women, when left undisturbed, naturally sing a 5th apart.  Harmonious.  The number 4 = 2*2 = the second octave.  The number 5 is the musical third  (Pat.  Glorious that symmetry under the cemetery wall).   Bald Pat Quite: a chord.  You want a little dissonance?  Try the numbers 7, 11, and 13.  Heavy mojo in those numbers.  I don’t even want to tell you about the number 20. Want to get a little irrational?  Play the strings.  Guitar frets are placed according to the 12th root of 2.  Oh the numbers.  Durations of notes have ratios too.  And now we get into geometry.  Oh my beauteous ones.  If I could only tell you.  Or show you.  Or sing you.  Or touch you.  Or taste you.  If only.  Then I will never leave you.  And you will never leave me.  We can entwine in mathematical harmonies and whisper eternality into each other’s vibrating tympanic membranes.  You will weave patterns with your body and look in triangular mirrors.  But then you will see God and leave me to suffer.  Snivel.  Big spanishy eyes goggling at nothing.  Wavyavyeavyheavyeavyevyevyhair un comb:’d.