The Lattice of Coincidence

I posted my item last night, about teachers and grandteachers (and Doktorväter and oedipal conflict), only to realize this morning that yesterday was Father's Day in the US, giving the post an unplanned and unexpected relevance. (In Germany, Father's day is on Ascension Thursday).

I will now admit that some of my most relevant words or actions have been unplanned and unexpected. Once, in one of those college parties that no one really wanted to be at but no one really wanted to leave, I was asked to make a toast. Aside from too much gin, I was unaccompanied that evening and single in a room full of couples. Struggling for meaningful words, I noticed the record player in the corner and my mind raced from the concept of HiFi to the word "fidelity", to which I then made an innocent and idealistic toast. Which was received with stunned faces. But for the gin, I should have realized sooner that the set of couples in the room actually consisted of a combinatorial repairing of an older set of couples, and any semblance of new love was a thin cover for older injuries. My toast was both innocent and cruel. Lorenzo da Ponte, that great moral dramatist, could not have chosen a more and less appropriate word than "fidelity", and it had simply sprung into my head.

When composing, even when deciding to use chance operations in the process, I can generally explain how each note got to be here or there, but there are always surprises, moments where despite all habit, calculation, or cunning, something appears that is both inexplicable and inexplicably right. And despite my inability to explain these moments away, they are usually the ones I most loathe to lose, the moments that turn patient labors into something more, well, musical.