CosmicAnacrusis
Before everything, when there was nothing, nothingness collided with nothingness and created something. Everything is created through a collision.
In music, when one or more notes precede the first strong beat of a composition, this is called anacrusis.Much like a promise, the anacrusis warns of what is to come while not yet entering into the diegesis of the musical work. The anacrusis devoid of its continuation seems to lead us to something, even though it does not provide sufficient information. Perhaps it was this type of vacuum that existed before the creation of the universe: a vacuum with potency.
But… what is the exact instant when nothing becomes something?
Generally, the anacrusis does not consist of a couple of arbitrary notes, imposed before the beginning of a composition. Rather, on the contrary, it is common (albeit not obligatory) that the anacrusis be a crucial part of the musical universe that is then created.
I think of it in a vacuum: the anacrusis without further ado.
Arrested in time, alone, without continuation.
Between the anacrusis and the first bar there are a few nanoseconds of rest, and then the Big Bang. Perhaps it was a constant repetition of this anacrusis, which then mutated into harmonics, that generated the shock from which the universal composition emerged.
Nothing
+ Nothing = Something
But…
What is it that comes before the beginning?
What is it that marks that something has already begun?
I could say that I started writing when the idea of the anacrusis came up, or I could say that I started when my voice was captured in this text. Or I could think like Borges and bring the story entirely into the present, thinking that I have lived my whole life in order to write this. Borges said, “The present integrally comprises all of history.”1 Or is it, perhaps—as dictated by the theory of the eternal return—that we are in a loop and we start again eternally, like the sea or like traffic?
Everything is collision! All instants are the same instant.
In 1965 Bell Laboratories built a radiometer to conduct satellite communication experiments; nevertheless, the equipment picked up a strange noise. Thus, what was accidentally discovered was microwave background radiation: a type of electromagnetic radiation that fills the entire universe. In 2013, physicist John Cramer programed an algorithm within the software Mathematica to translate microwave background noise into the range of human hearing. As the universe expanded, it thereby stretched the wavelengths, creating a deeper sound; thus, Cramer had to magnify the sound 100 septillion times in order for it to be heard.
1 “Marcus Aurelius affirms the analogous, but not identical, nature of multifarious human destinies He affirms that any time span a century, a year, a single night, perhaps the ungraspable present contains the entirety of history” I transcribe the complete sentences of the famous essay “Circular Time” in order to point out that, apparently, Borges’s words are a paraphrase of Marcus Aurelius But when it comes to Borges, how can we be sure? [Editor’s note.]
Φ First translation: cosmic background radiation is brought into Mathematica
Φ Second: from Mathematica to the range of frequencies perceptible by humans
Φ Third: from the range perceptible by humans to psychoacoustic mp3 compression
Φ Fourth: from mp3 to our ears
Cramer stated that, although he used the same method as with temperature, the waves captured for his study were real sound waves propagating in the universe; he therefore concluded that, when the universe is sufficiently small, space-time resonates within itself.
A sound event that had no witnesses.
In the future one can hear the tree fall.
The present integrally contains all of history All instants are the same instant. All collisions are the same collision.
The instant of the sonic event persists in eternity, like psychophonies lost in space-time. The Big Bang always starts again.
The sound emitted by a string is determined by its standing wave; a clear example is how the note emitted by a guitar changes depending on the fret being plucked. In membranophones, such as drums, these standing waves are of a two-dimensional type, so the vibration modes are not harmonics of their standing wave, and indeed this is why there are difficulties in tuning them to a specific pitch.
I am floating on the waters of Bahía Kino. I see the undulating shapes of waves, of sand, and of a mountain. They make me think of the earth as a membrane, as a great drum with vibrations at different times, and to conceive of creation as a drumbeat. The transients of the Big Bang are gone, and frequencies oscillate without beginning or end: phantom hertzes that escape listening; standing waves impossible to measure by humans.
The erosion of the mountains, the eruption of the volcanoes and the waves of the sea are the delays of that first drum roll.
The erosion of the mountains, the eruption of the volcanoes and the waves of the sea are the delays of that first drum roll
The erosion of the mountains, the eruption of the volcanoes and the waves of the sea are the delays of that first drum roll.
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