For the Tempus-Fugitives

by Christopher Norris

  By showing how we lacked the strength to bear

  Such undeluding truths. Yet, if we came

  Up against some mémoire involontaire,

  Perhaps some near-death flashback that could frame

  And shrink our lifetime to an instant where

  The ratios went sky-high, then all the same,

  Despite our having taken full on board

  All that the mathematikoi had taught

  Our time-sick souls, their cure might not afford

  Us mental strength enough to face the sort

  Of panic-state that used to have us floored

  And does right now. Then we perceive how short

  Such mind-games fall of finding some accord

  Between that old, inconsolable thought

  Of temps too soon perdu and tricks that scored

  Top points for puzzle-solving though they brought

  No sense of kairos gratefully restored

  Or gift to heal the damage chronos wrought

  When clock-time calibrated. This ignored

  Its finely gauged potential to distort

  Whatever our life-histories have shored

  Against time’s shrewd contrivances to thwart

  The time-shaped craving that time should reward

  Us tempus-fugitives with times less fraught

  Since amply sutured by the triple cord

  Of body, mind and world that time holds taut.

  DIABOLUS IN MUSICA

  Legend has it that an 11th century Benedictine monk and vocal

  tutor Guido d’Arezzo coined the dictum “mi contra fa est

  diabolus in musica” (“Mi with Fa is the devil in music”) to

  discourage vocalists from using specific dissonant

  intervals…Here are the implied “mi–fa” combinations including

  inversions: C to B is a 7th. F to B is a #4th. B to C is a 2nd. B to F

  is a ь5th. Curiously it is only the ь5th of these intervals that

  retains the demonic moniker in modern times.

  —Guy Pople

  There are strict musical rules. You aren’t allowed to use this

  particular dissonance. It simply won’t work technically, you are

  taught not to write that interval. But you can read into that a

  theological ban in the guise of a technical ban.

  —John Deathridge

  I

  Diabolus in musica: they feared

  The tritone like the devil; how its spell

  Wrought discord in the souls of listeners reared

  In diatonic ways and conjured hell-

  On-earth to those few auditors sharp-eared

  Enough to catch what tales it had to tell

  Of chaos come again. As music veered

  About the octave’s midpoint so the well-

  Trained contrapuntalists who’d once adhered

  To Rome’s strict rule were driven to rebel,

  Junk all the compass-points by which they’d steered

  Well clear of rocks so far, and thenceforth dwell

  Way out beyond the tonal safe-zone cleared

  By guardians of the faith. And so it fell

  On their shocked sense as if the devil jeered

  At every effort to suppress or quell

  The restlessness that surfaced in such weird

  Though ear-beguiling sounds as might compel,

  Alas, such devilish deafness to revered

  And hallowed teachings.

  II

  Forward wind: Purcell

  Writes harmonies that, for the Fathers, seared

  The listener’s soul but makes the most of their

  Now devil-free potential to augment

  Both simple fourths and whatsoever share

  Of grief those intervals might represent,

  Yet in a way that bids the church forebear

  To challenge or proscribe since clearly meant

  To signal how its dissonance may square

  With what fresh scope the Reformation lent

  To such displays of feeling. These declare

  How all the major-minor shifts that went,

  Back then, to plant the warning sign “Beware,

  Forbidden territory” now circumvent

  That rule by saying: hear the soul at prayer

  In harmonies that speak of its intent

  To cast aside all rules that might impair

  True passion’s voice. How else should it lament,

  As Purcell did, when called upon to spare

  No depth of feeling such as once he’d spent

  Great effort to suppress but now took care,

  As in his Funeral Sentences, to vent

  In ways that few before or since would dare.

  III

  Sibelius Four: the tritones occupy

  Almost the whole of tonal space, yet stay

  Well short of atonality. For why

  Take Schoenberg’s route and leave yourself no way

  To raise the norm of dissonance so high

  Within that space that music might convey

  Such harsh and hard-won truths? They fructify,

  Those tritones, till the only truths that they

  Afford the listener willing to get by

  On such cold comfort rests in what they say

  Of how the laws of entropy apply

  To music, how the living sounds decay,

  How vainly the negentropists deny

  What no mere shift of key can long delay,

  Or how those demon intervals they try

  Through careful filtering to hold at bay

  Must shortly find them out and so defy

  Their sanguine gloss. If seasoned listeners pay

  The devil his due it’s when keys go awry,

  When some chord-sequence instantly falls prey

  To ear’s equivalent of evil-eye

  And false relations once again betray

  The tritone’s devilry. So all hopes die

  Of any modulation fit to play

  A saving role and reassert the tie

  Of tonic-dominant that kept such stray

  Augmented intervals from letting fly

  With aural weaponry designed to fray

  Those homely chords. Yet still the tritones vie

  For extra Lebensraum, strive as we may

  To tune out alien frequencies, decry

  Their every land-grab, and resist the sway

  Of alien powers. That’s why our ears fight shy

  Each time that E flat modulates to A.

  WEATHER

  ‘Weather forecast for tonight: dark.’ (George Carlin)

  The night before, quite late, was when you said

  How other people change in just the way

  The weather changes; how we plan ahead,

  Switch plans with what the latest forecasts say,

  And tend to take it pretty much as read

  They’ll not be too far out. Yet, come the day,

  Us trusting types may find we’ve been misled

  By the same over-confidence that they,

  The weather-experts, showed. Let’s think instead

  (You mused that night as nerves began to fray

  And time drew on but still not time for bed)

  That what sends all those best-laid plans astray

  Is what the wisest people-watchers dread

  As much as weather-watchers. Our dismay

  When things go wrong then tells us we must shed

  The old delusion that we knew what lay

  Days, hours or minutes off and learn to tread

  More cautiously so as to keep at bay

  The kinds of future-shock designed to shred

  Our puny storm-defences. If we play

  Along with the old forecast-game that spread

  Such confidence it’s odds-on we’ll betray,

  Like me next day, the false assurance bred

  By seasonal routines
that first convey

  Glad tidings but, when once we lose the thread

  And panic strikes, collapse the whole array

  Of habit-formed expectances that fed

  Our need to buck the odds and disobey

  The canny gambler’s rule. If I saw red

  That morning or put up some fool display

  Of teacup storm-cloud conjuring that led

  To an occluded cold front, one that may

  Prefigure climate-change, then what you said

  The previous night, though true, is apt to prey

  More harshly on mild weather-watchers wed,

  Like me, to forecasts saying things will stay

  Much as they were till all the lines go dead.

  LOST SOULS

  Dear Dr. Weeks,

  I would think that as people get older their eccentricities would become more evident as they would be more able to express themselves freely. Instead I find the opposite. Most senior citizens are total conformists who don’t want to deviate from the pack in any way. Are my observations valid? Do tendencies to express yourself change with age?

  —Carol

  Dear Carol,

  Generally speaking, eccentric people become more eccentric with age. However, eccentric people do not become eccentric in old age; most eccentrics become eccentric in childhood or adolescence. If a person, especially a male, were first to show eccentric behavior in old age, as a clinician I would consider other causes. It would suggest illness, either of a psychiatric or physical nature. However, where there are higher concentrations of older retired people—in Britain, around the seacoast—there will be more older eccentric people, perhaps because eccentrics tend to live longer.

  Yours sincerely,

  Dr. David Weeks

  Time was when university or church

  Offered a bolt-hole, refuge in distress,

  Or last-chance hideaway for those in search

  Of any spot where their contrariness,

  Their stubborn eccentricity or lack

  Of savoir-faire might not make such a mess

  Of things or let catastrophes so stack

  Up that they’d more than likely come to grief

  Should circumstance decree they venture back

  Into the outside world. There’s no relief

  Now for these émigrés to inner space

  Except the dubious blessing of a brief

  And youthful intermission at some place

  Of “higher learning” where the main idea

  Is higher earning, or—as in the case

  Of those for whom the other-worldly sphere

  Is theocentric—some sequestered school

  Of faith and ministry. Whence they’ll appear,

  Some few years on, to play the holy fool,

  Though scarcely blessed with what Erasmus thought

  The higher wisdom that, by a strict rule

  Of role-reversal, was most aptly taught

  By those accounted fools on any score

  Drawn up by all the wise guys. Now they’re caught,

  Imperfect fools, without the old rapport

  That put them on a wavelength finely tuned

  To God’s own channel so that they implore

  Our charitable alms like souls marooned

  By backwash from the “melancholy, low,

  Withdrawing roar” to which the lovers swooned

  In Arnold’s loss-of-faith seduction show.

  Now the mudflat-revealing tidal reach

  Just goes to show how far that long-ago

  Consolatory scene on Dover Beach

  Falls short of any promise to console

  These scholar-gypsies of our time, or teach

  Them an updated version of the role

  In which he neatly managed to combine

  Those low-prophetic vibes (sea over shoal,

  Love over waning faith) with a good line

  In classy chat-up talk. Not so his lost

  Inheritors whom fate or genes consign

  To mere perdition as the hidden cost

  Our modernizers one and all see fit

  To pay while little heeding who gets tossed

  Into the limbo of stray souls that flit

  Disconsolate from worldly scene to scene

  Until they either find the nerve to quit

  That whole charade or take the might-have-been

  Replacement world of make-believe as their

  Safe haven from the pressures of routine

  Or fears of how the actual may ensnare

  The possible. At any rate no scope

  For those who’d draw a cordon sanitaire

  Around their eccentricity and hope

  By that to keep the new regime at bay,

  Or give themselves a bit of room to cope

  With the new rule-book drawn up to convey

  A blunt demand. This says they’d better stick

  Within the bounds of actualité

  And do their level-headed best to kick

  Those self-indulgent reveries that grant

  Them absolution simply at the flick

  Of a switch wired to make it seem they can’t,

  For now at least, be subject to the kinds

  Of norm that rule no fiction should supplant

  The hic et nunc of more resilient minds.

  And then, as if such chivvying weren’t enough

  To fray the nerves of anyone who finds

  No comfort-zone in that quotidian stuff

  But ample cause for fear, there’s what they’ve done,

  Those new viceroys of academe, to snuff

  Out the last sparks of selfhood, one by one,

  And so at last inaugurate the reign

  Of universal dullness. This might run

  As if in grooves so long as they remain

  Sole arbiters of what should make the grade

  As four-star scholarship and what they deign

  To mention, if at all, under some trade-

  Description such as “Miscellaneous,” “Type

  Four: other public output,” or just “Weighed

  In our research-grant scales and rated tripe

  By all the indicators.” Then, worse still,

  There’s the unspoken flipside of this hype

  For rule-bound mediocrity that will,

  Once prompted, find occasion to suggest

  That, sad to say, they’re way over the hill,

  Those name-antiquities, or past their best

  In terms of anything that might compute

  With management or pass the final test

  Of excellence requiring that one suit

  One’s own objectives to the standard set

  By corporate bosses eager to recruit

  Young talent bright and keen enough to get

  A toehold on the ladder, although not

  So bright and keen as might just pose a threat

  To corporate values. As a parting shot

  Line-managers can nowadays inject

  That weasel-word, “eccentric,” that they jot

  Down once the tick-box bits have all been checked,

  With a strong hint that here the word implies

  Not “pretty crazy, as you might expect

  Of one so highly gifted,” nor “defies

  Our best attempts to place them on a scale

  Drawn up for lesser minds,” but—in the guise

  Of fond indulgence—more a bid to nail

  Their “eccentricity” as bearing all

  The tell-tale marks of intellect grown frail,

  Or mind that’s frankly not quite on the ball

  And needs a rest. Behind it looms the great

  New terror whose first tell-tale signs appall

  The self-observer whose declining state

  Becomes the single focus of their own

  And others’ urgent need to estimate

  What’s left of mind or selfhood in that zone

/>   Of indistinction where their power to bring

  About Kant’s fragile bond of knower and known

  Grows weaker as they desperately cling

  To its last vestiges. This cruelest twist

  Of implication is the very thing

  Most needed by the canny strategist

  One of whose tasks is quietly to propose

  A means by which some colleagues might be kissed

  Goodbye with no requirement to disclose

  Good grounds or reason since it’s pretty much

  The common wisdom now that most of those

  Past middling years will likely show a touch

  Of (let’s say) idiosyncrasy. And then,

  More senior still—once they’ve advanced to such

  An age as tops the old three-score-and-ten—

  They start to recognise the shifty look

  And awkward topic-change that follows when

  They talk about the article or book

  They’re working on, or how they’re keen to take

  A term’s research-leave (since the last they took

  Was decades back), if only for the sake

  Of catching up with all the latest trends

  Or struggling, for the umpteenth time, to make

  Some sense of deconstruction. Even friends,