March 4, 2016

Fiction By Scott Thomas Outlar: "And Then There Was Sound (God's Opera)"

Scott Thomas Outlar hosts the site 17Numa.wordpress.com where links to his poetry and fiction can be found. His words have appeared recently in venues such as Yellow Chair Review, Poetry Quarterly, Tuck Magazine, and Dead Snakes. Scott's chapbook "Songs of a Dissident" was released in 2015 through Transcendent Zero Press and is available on Amazon.








And Then There Was Sound

(God’s Opera)
         
        
  In the beginning there was a void.  Seemingly, with no reason to believe otherwise, there was only nothingness.  There was black silence.

         Thriving nihilistically for countless millennia, the silence endured.

         But, as it turned out, the silence was not an entirety in and of itself.  Indeed, the silence represented only the first note, albeit the most quiet.  The silence was simply holding the place for the next note.

         Thus did the initial rising tempo begin.  From out the silence that had dwelled in the nothingness, something called sound developed in a process of natural, organic evolution through rhythmic movement and pulsing vibrations.

         Over the next two trillion years, the new note alternated with silence in what became the first two piece harmony.  Back and forth in a perfect give and take, the pair played off each other.

         The original audible note was broadcasted in a very low and minor key.  It existed as a feint hum of barely whispered energy.

         Just as this note had erupted into reality, so too did the next note come.  And then another.  These new notes swirled around in a chaotically fashioned fit, bashing into and bouncing off of each other confusedly.

         Hundreds of billions of decades passed.  Eight notes had now been blessedly born.  As yet, no cohesive order or structure had developed.  The eight notes played constantly, interweaving with each other randomly.  At this point, the original place holder known as silence had been all but lost to the wild reign of musical schizophrenia.

         After one furious riffing flurry, a moment eventually arrived when the notes, now up to thirteen, all tired out at the same time, and, for a fraction of a second, silence was reborn during the quiet mindfulness.

         The sacred revival of the crucially calm element caused a subtle shifting vibration.  The notes, guided by holy inherent awareness, fell into their proper places and started playing confidently.

         Thus was orchestrated music conceptualized to be performed.

         Thus was God created.

         The perfecting melody of the notes balanced harmoniously with periods of silence to cause frequencies of pure electric energy to explode into existence.  The effect was existential transcendence.  God was a primal thought, a universal consciousness, a burgeoning power.  God became necessary, for there had to be some form of an audience able to appreciate the music that began to fill the cosmos.

         The notes continued to expand exponentially over the next sixteen eternities while forming new tones between each other.  God drifted through the void, listening to and absorbing the music.  All the while, God’s mind grew and matured.  As God realized rhythms in the sounds, Mathematics was created to count the beats.

         With the pleasant arrival of the major keys, God smiled for the first time.  Now God’s existence had new meaning: Happiness.

         Different sounds, however, affected God’s mood in other ways.  As the major and minor keys played in tune with each other, beautiful peak moments would overwhelm God, causing melancholy and Sadness.

         What had originally been one pure emotion was now split into halves.  Thus were opposites formed.  God, as Its mind continued to mold, thought deeply about the duality of opposites.  Philosophy was developed during such intellectual periods of contemplation.

         Centuries passed as the notes continued to expand and evolve.  Symphonies of sound filled all space in the universe.  God had been born from the music but, over time, began to function as a separate entity.  Feeling empowered and triumphant, God initiated a natural process to rejoin with the Cosmic Karmic Orchestra.  While doing so, an exciting proof became evident.  God was now even more powerful than the music.

         No longer was God a sound of the music; now the music was an instrument of God.  And God decided that it was Good.

         With newfound enthusiasm and passion, God began making progressive changes to the environment.

         As certain notes grew tiresome, God would shove them away, further out into the galaxy where their waves of sound would have to travel vast distances to ever be heard from again.  As God sent these notes outward It called them stars and blessed them with energy and light.

         Thus did Astronomy develop as the first star clusters formed.

         God demanded that the notes intuitively improvise and produce evermore exotic music.  After one particularly off key rehearsal, God decided to arrange the notes in patterns that It devised instead of allowing them to randomly strike chords.

         Carefully crafting complex combinations, God provided tender loving care to special notes that It favored the most.  This pet treatment resulted in combustion and chemical reactions.  Gasses began to steam.  Substances started to evolve.

         Thus was Science begun as a means of explanation.

         Hours ticked away as God entered the laboratory studio to arrange intricate operas.  God’s reaction would vary depending on the tone of each manipulated piece.  Some would arouse great pleasure and joy.  Happiness returned as God embraced these upbeat sounds within Its innermost being.  A new pulsing rhythm started drumming inside God’s chest.           

         A heart, with a beat of its own, began pumping.

         But just as some sounds were hopeful and inspiring, others weighed heavy with the gravity of depression and sorrow.  God’s heart was broken as It listened, for a string of long minutes, to a tragic arrangement of notes that led to an empty emotion: Loneliness.  God wept.

         During this time of great crisis, God remained undecided on what to do about the situation.  Until, in a synchronistic splash, an urgent uplifting chord progression formed, causing a sudden inspired intuitive outburst.

         God went to work, guided by the soulful sense of Instinct.

         First, God created a fuming, fiery, bright star with one of the most intense notes.  God called this star the Sun.  Then, understanding the full necessity of balanced opposites, God reflected a descending downbeat off a satellite note named Moon.

         The two formed a perfect orbiting circuit of Day and Night.

         This was all fine and good, but still the itchy, persistent feeling of Loneliness tugged at God’s heart-strings, producing a sad song.

         In a terrible funk for the longest time over these circumstances, God went into a raging, wrathful fit, smashing notes together violently and slamming sounds with brutal strikes.  God roared and slaughtered a sacrifice in Its own holy honor.

         As two huge, bombastic notes shattered into each other, a new chemical was formed.  A wet, flowing, clear substance filled nearly the entire surface area on one of the large planet-notes.  God called the fresh substance Water and named the planet Earth.

         The loud banging of the notes bashing together created not only water, but also a new vibrant, volcanic sound that flooded existence with a thick, thunderous, sonic noise.

         Thus did Bass Lines underlie the score.

         God had a new toy.  Playing around, God discovered a neat trick.  Every note that had been utilized thus far could be duplicated in the deeper, richer, bizarre, weirdly textured tone.

         For awhile, fingering new sounds and sculpting original sonnets, God forgot about being lonely.  But as the novelty began to wear thin, God longed for something that could not be pinpointed or nailed down.

         Suffering existential misery, God entered inside certain notes that had become warm blooded worlds.  God studied the water on one such world and developed the opinion that it was comprised of the perfect combination of elements.  God grew fond of the liquid and conducted pioneering research and experimentation involving sounds near to and even submerged underneath it.

         The bubbling echo pulsar reverberations that God heard peaked curiosity and led to further testing and proofing which influenced the production of foot pedals, amplifiers, triangles, bells and whistles.  The successful experiments backed up God’s belief that water had potential beyond any other molecular structure created thus far.

         And so, on a whim, God placed a cluster of small notes into a flowing body of water that was called a River.  God watched as strange, wonderful things began to happen.

         The released notes explored the water and took on a life of their own, growing roots and developing naturally.  Just as God had once come from the music and then become a separate entity, now the music that came from God was shaping into its own organic form and dimension.

         Consciousness spread.  Plants and animals grew from the sound seeds that sprouted in the water.

         Thus did the Cycle of the Sound spin around.

         God’s Loneliness dissipated as It set up a spiritual connection with the other organisms that had multiplied from the energy source.  A collective, unified, totality of existence was established based upon the all encompassing nature of the music.

         Joyously, content with Happiness, God traveled the vast expanses of the cosmos and planted musical seeds in the soil of many stars.  God grew closer to and more intimate with the creatures of Its creation as their numbers increased.  The collective web of consciousness developed into a finely woven orchestra of infinite pieces and interconnected parts.

         Reminiscing on the original quiet stage of the sound, God rested, relaxed, calmed down, and entered a state of silent meditation, soaking in the solar rays of life light from all the evolving species.

         After reaching numbness and perfect bliss, God released all Its energy outward as spiritual notes which developed into every feeling, emotion, and idea.  Pain and pleasure and happiness and despondency and good and evil and right and wrong and vanity and empathy and hope and depression and excitement and boredom and melancholy and sentimentality and love and hate and lust and greed and charity and compassion and joy and jealousy and hubris and contentment and awareness and angst and sorrow were all poured forth from God to merge with the organic process of evolution.

         God emptied out and sacrificed Itself at the Altar of the Opera, recycling back into the Source of the Sound.

         With a proud last movement upon the keys, God played the final note that could finish the Music of the Spheres.

         Thus was humanity created as a voice to sing melodic lyrics and complete the Symphonic Song.

~Scott Thomas Outlar

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