A week or so ago I heard an interview on National
Public Radio with the theoretical phsycist Michio Kaku. Beyond his many
television appearances and published works, Kaku’s real claim to fame is as one
of the creators and developers of what’s known as Superstring Field
Theory. Superstring Theory is an attempt
to take Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity – which deals with the force of
gravity and large-scale structures such as galaxies – and the various theories
of Quantum Mechanics – which deal with the other four fundamental forces of the
universe and structures at a sub-atomic level – and put them together. This unification of these various theorems is
sometimes called, not so humbly I’d point out, “the Theory of Everything.”
To try to explain String
Theory, Kaku reminded us of how strings work in the world we know – think of
the strings on a guitar. If you pluck
one, it vibrates. It creates a tone, a
note. Pluck a string of a different
thickness, or length, and you get a different note. A different tone. A different vibration. This “Theory of Everything” posits that the
basic, fundamental reality, if you will, of the universe consists of “strings”
floating in space/time. These strings
vibrate and their vibrations, their notes, are the various basic elements of
creations – bosons and fermions.
Everything in the material world, then – the sun, the moon, the stars,
the starfish, the moon pies, and even you and me – all of it, can be described
as, fundamentally, vibrations of these strings.
You and me and everything we can see and feel around us are the
harmonization of these strings. We are literally
notes in the symphony of life.
Cool, right?
And one of the reasons I especially
love this new science is that it ties in so nicely with one of my favorite old
myths. It’s a creation story, but not
any of the ones passed down in the oral traditions of the many Native American
Nations, nor the Scandinavian story written in the Elder and Younger Eddas, nor
even the foundational creation myth of the Jewish and Christian traditions,
recorded in the Bible. No, my favorite
creation story is the one recorded in The
Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien.
(Published posthumously in 1977 but begun back in 1914.)
According to this tale,
Eru, Ilúvatar, The One, sings a chord, a theme, into the void. The Ainur, perhaps the closest analog we’d
recognize would be “angels,” then essentially improvise a melody around this
chord. Discord is introduced, so Ilúvatar
offers a new theme and the Ainur continue their improvisations. This happens three times, until finally Eru sets
forth a theme which incorporates and completes everything that came
before. Eru then commands their Ainur to
open their eyes and see what they’ve created with their song . . . and they see
the universe we know and love. Here, in
this tale, is the truth scientists are only just discovering – the universe,
and everything in it, is physicalized music.
I love music. Always have.
Maybe it’s because I grew up in a musical family. My brothers and I were all singers when we
were younger, and Pat played a mean guitar while Paul played a smoking
bass. I played the French horn.
And there was nearly
always music playing somewhere. The 60s and
70s rock my brothers listened to. Jazz,
both classical and avant garde. Actually,
just about anything and everything.
After my parents died my brothers and I went through their record
collection. There was an album of
Scottish Bagpipes next to Oscar Brand’s Baudy
Sea Shanties next to the Oscar Peterson trio’s rendition of the music from “West
Side Story.” Carmina Burana next to The
Grand Canyon Suite next to Carmen. Everything from Aaron Copland to Frank Zappa –
if it was music, we listened to it.
And we’re not alone in
responding to music’s magical charms.
While working on the sermon I found this quote from the abolitionist,
suffragist, and Unitarian Lydia Maria Child:
“While I listened, music was to my soul
what the atmosphere is to my body; it was the breath of my inward life. I felt, more deeply than ever, that music is
the highest symbol of the infinite and holy. . . . With renewed force I felt what I have often
said, that the secret of creation lay in music.
‘A voice to light gave
being.’ Sound led the stars into their
places.”
The renowned author
Ursala K. Le Guinn has asked,
“What good is music? None . . . and that is the point. To the world and its states and armies and
factories and Leaders, music says, ‘You are irrelevant”; and, arrogant and gentle
as a god, to the suffering [one] it says only, ‘Listen.’ For being saved is not the point. Music saves nothing. Merciful, uncaring, it denies and breaks down
all shelters, the houses [we] build for [ourselves], that [we] may see the
sky.”
The poet George Eliot
said,
“I think I should have no other mortal
wants, if I could always have plenty of music.
It seems to infuse strength into my limbs and ideas into my brain. Life seems to go on without effort, when I am
filled with music.”
An anonymous
commentator once said, “Music is what feelings sound like.”
And Thomas Carlyle wrote (in words that give this
sermon its title), “Music is well said to be the speech of angels.”
And, of course, a
pre-eminent theologian of the twentieth century once said, famously:
Music
is a world within itself
With a language we all understand
With an equal opportunity
For all to sing, dance and clap their hands
(That is, of course, from Stevie Wonder’s magnum
opus, “Sir Duke.”)
Of course, not everyone
likes music. Or, at least, some people
say that they don’t like music but in my very unscientific survey it seems to
me that what these people are usually saying is that they don’t like some
particular kind of music.
Take the playwright
Virginia Graham who said, “There are some composers—at the head of whom stands
Beethoven—who not only do not know when to stop but appear to stop many times
before they actually do.”
Or the English author
Dodie Smith who said, “The one Bach piece I learnt made me feel I was being
repeatedly hit on the head with a teaspoon.”
Or the actress and
writer Maureen Lipman who said (and this is my favorite), “To Jack (my
husband), his violin is comfort and relaxation.
To his inky wife, it’s time to put her head down the waste disposal unit
again.”
One of the reasons some
people don’t like music is that they are convinced – usually because someone
told them so at a young age – that they are “musically challenged.” “She can’t carry a tune in a bucket,” is a
phrase that comes to mind.
My dad couldn’t carry a
tune if it was put into a gift-wrapped box and stapled to his forehead. But that didn’t stop him. That didn’t stop him from initiating – initiating – the annual singing of
Handel’s “Hallelujah Chorus” with his three award-winning choir member sons
while we trimmed the tree each year.
That didn’t stop him from breaking out into the song – “Many brave
hearts / are asleep in the deep / so beware. / Beware.” – at any opportunity. That didn’t stop him from joining a choir
during his adult life. He loved music,
and he loved making music at whatever
level he was able.
There’s an old proverb
from Zimbabwe – if you can walk, you can dance; if you can talk, you can sing. I want to say this morning – this Music
Sunday during which we’ve hears such lovely song – I want to declare this
morning that each of us can make
music. And maybe that’s because each of
us is music. If Michio Kaku and his colleagues are right,
then we are quite literally embodied music, music incarnate. Let that
thought vibrate through you for the rest of the day.
