Monday, July 24, 2006

Ode to a Well Tempered Clavier

Dear Myers Briggs,

Oh, Myers, I think it started when I looked at the Keirsey temperament sorter. I didn't mean to take it, but then they said I would be finished in a mere 12 minutes, and. . . that I would have a whole new vision of me, ready to face myself and the world with renewed confidence, knowing that I am I and that, well, I'm perfectly normal, just like 1.8877 percent of the population with a B average.

So, I fell in, and came out an Idealist. Now I'm stuck searching for the ideal way to live. If I could just achieve some baroque kind of order to my life that would balance out the notes I hear in the right side of my brain with the ones I hear in the left. Frankly I think that's what Bach was trying to do when he started messing around with the tunings of his harpsicord. Those old church scales, just weren't ideal, and when he heard that Phrygian mode, he knew it had to go.

With a well-tuned harpsichord, the harmonies began to soar. It was like an invention! And even when the church started shooting their canons at him, he just increased the volume on his basso continuo and turned the other fugue.

I've been working a bit with my clavier, checking the frequencies, doing the math. I think I've just about got it right. I'm preparing for the show, because one of these days my key is going to shift, the tension's going to rise, and bingo, an ideal resolution.

That, my dear Myers, will be the day.

B

Tags: Music

2 comments:

Unknown said...

Betsy! I'm an idealist too!

brd said...

Why doesn't that surprise me! You and I get along too well for that not to be true.

By the way, we have named "The Gray One," Graham. As soon as I told the fam that I had discovered that your name means, the gray one, it was decided, even though she is a she.