Vignettes - Perspective I
Michael Rainier had forgotten his glasses. Without them he was almost blind when looking at anything closer to him than three feet. He muttered under his breath as he buttoned the front of his grey hound’s-tooth vest. Considering running home, he glanced at the clock. 7:52. It was too late: the performance began at 8:00 sharp, no excuses. He was no stranger to this problem, but before it wasn’t a hindrance to his performance. His highly analytical mind absorbed notes from the page during every rehearsal, placing them into his photographic memory for safe storage until they were needed again. He groaned as he tied his ascot as he remembered why tonight was distinctly different from all of the performances he had been involved in previously. This was not an ordinary, run of the mill performance with the proper notes laid out one after another, always the same, always reliable and predictable. Leading tonight’s pieces was an odd mixture of theatre, art, music, and audience involvement. None of these bothered Michael. He possessed the carefully constructed psyche of a mathematician or physicist, and looked forward to the rehearsed order and assuredness of each performance. Tonight’s lead piece was instead an aleatoric experiment in sound- each movement of music was determined by some outside force like the rolling of dice, flipping and shuffling of cards, and the making of calculations. He knew the music, each small indication of which outcomes dictated which sounds, each indication of instrumentation, movement, and gesture. Even so, tonight’s performance would be completely original from any other previous performance of the same piece- an artistic organization of the principles of the chaos theory at their finest.
Michael hadn’t considered it from this point of view, the apparent connection of two disparate disciplines. Each roll of the dice produced wildly different outcomes from one roll to the next. Each card toss or calculation rendered something different, something new and unlike anything before. Since each musical phrase depended on the elements previously presented, one small difference could skew the performance wildly in an infinite number of directions. Michael gave a small smile as he adjusted his overcoat in the mirror, remembering the bored looks and yawns of his fellow collegians as a professor explained this concept as the butterfly effect- the notion that a butterfly beating its wings in Tai Pai one day could affect storm systems in New York the next.
Grabbing his props of a deck of playing cards and a pair of dice, Michael found his fellow performers heading out to the stage area to prepare for the opening piece. Stepping into the almost complete darkness that housed the low, well-worn stage was easy; he had made this same journey three nights a week for the better part of five years, performing avant-garde and newly composed music for the up-to-date music lovers of the city. Finding the perimeter of the stage, he took his seat on the couch that was central to the set, an overstuffed beige monstrosity that had a torn-up strip of fringe running around its bottom cushions, partly hiding the carved wooden legs underneath.
He shuffled his cards, looked into the dark room, and the lights slowly revealed themselves.
Michael hadn’t considered it from this point of view, the apparent connection of two disparate disciplines. Each roll of the dice produced wildly different outcomes from one roll to the next. Each card toss or calculation rendered something different, something new and unlike anything before. Since each musical phrase depended on the elements previously presented, one small difference could skew the performance wildly in an infinite number of directions. Michael gave a small smile as he adjusted his overcoat in the mirror, remembering the bored looks and yawns of his fellow collegians as a professor explained this concept as the butterfly effect- the notion that a butterfly beating its wings in Tai Pai one day could affect storm systems in New York the next.
Grabbing his props of a deck of playing cards and a pair of dice, Michael found his fellow performers heading out to the stage area to prepare for the opening piece. Stepping into the almost complete darkness that housed the low, well-worn stage was easy; he had made this same journey three nights a week for the better part of five years, performing avant-garde and newly composed music for the up-to-date music lovers of the city. Finding the perimeter of the stage, he took his seat on the couch that was central to the set, an overstuffed beige monstrosity that had a torn-up strip of fringe running around its bottom cushions, partly hiding the carved wooden legs underneath.
He shuffled his cards, looked into the dark room, and the lights slowly revealed themselves.