This is total nonsense. Have to feed the blog, though.

Walking through Washington Park over my lunch hour, I was treated to a warm-up performance by one of the carillon artists here in town for the annual festival. I’m not sure who the particular performer was, but she was obviously schooled in the indie rock scene of the 1980s as I could her strains of both Husker Du’s “Divide and Conquer” and Mission of Burma’s “That’s When I Reach for My Revolver” in her playing. I wonder if the people driving their vintage cars through the park picked up on these influences. Or maybe it was just my imagination.

Listening to the bells chiming through the breeze, it occurred to me that carillon music has much in common with clouds, the white fluffy kind not the dark and foreboding ones that signal a coming tempest. Both are airy and comforting, and both are given to interpretation.

With clouds, you can lie in the grass, squint your eyes a bit, and see formations that resemble anything from Washington crossing the Delaware to Itchy chasing Scratchy with a power saw.

Similarly, the slow, deliberate pace of the carillon music almost invites you to either anticipate the next note or fill-in your own. The absence of a strong, distinct melody also entices the listener to create their own to play over the composition. Remember, this all came to me during my lunch hour and free from the influence of substances conducive to such musings.

It occurred to me that analysts and psychologists could use the occasion of the carillon festival to conduct aural Rorschach tests on their patients. Listening to how a person interprets the music and which direction they take it could be quite revealing. Imagine an estranged and recalcitrant couple brought to Washington Park by their marriage counselor. After a half hour or so they become lost in the reverie of the bells and she begins to spit out 50 Cent lyrics while he gently hums a Barbara Streisand tune. Immediately, the counselor would be able to identify the source of their marital discontent.

I always thought that I was capable of doing something groundbreaking; I never imagined it would be in the field of human psychology. That my definitive work in the area was conceived and postulated during a single, 40 minute walk in the park is nothing short of remarkable.

I’ll try to post something worth commenting on real soon. I know that some of you miss Monkey Boy, probably now more than ever.