WRITING NATURE: 
DISCOURSES OF ECOLOGY

The first note rings resoundingly, wavering throughout the air before quietly slipping away into nothingness. It never returns to its origin. The single melody line continues; whispering pitches fade in and out of existence, and I follow the flow of mood, my emotions leading me into the rich resonance and guiding me through blind paths.

This is the music I create, feel, possess, when I find myself before a set of 88 black and white ivory keys.

There wasn't always this freedom, though. Saturday mornings found me squinting tiredly in my youth; I'd be lost in a swirl of dreams, deceiving myself to have awakened and finding my body sunken in the bed once again. As a child still reveling in the days of X-Men and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, it was difficult to look forward to a morning of lost cartoons, a day full of intangible scales and classical sonatas. Whereas one sometimes finds moments where decisions pivot and branch off in numerous directions, I really had no choice in the matterŠ so I accepted my fate as a necessity and swallowed.

Unconsciously, a foundation was forming within me. Every lined dot that I read on a sheet, every key that I pressed down embedded part of an invisible framework defining my musical style. But was it my style? To claim ownership requires a significant leap, one of personal choice and development, and I only seemed to function in the manner which was dictated to me by others. Where were my choices incorporated?

The notes hesitate briefly, a soft sigh in preparation of a passage more familiar and rehearsed. Still hushed, the music rolls gently into a comfortable pace, the breaths slipping beside one another in crafted patterns; the movement almost feels mindless, a sequence of order self-perpetuating to eternity without external touch, a self-contained organic art.

I want to own my music as an enclosed creation, but perhaps I am simply living through it, feeding off its self-propagating nature and falsely merging its intentions with my own. It's like searching for the line where you end and your creativity begins; everything is a jumbled mess, or an organized compilation of intersecting functions, whatever your preference. We all start at some sort of base, then expand outward, perhaps in a spiraling fashion, perhaps branching off from point to point ad infinitum. But there is the base.

Society calls it environmental influence. Or some other alteration of those words. The labeling is almost ironic; a concept based upon internal feeding and self-propagation also understands this process and yet continues forward under the same pretense, enclosing itself and leeching its own life like a confused parasite.

Complications arise. ExceptŠ things should be simple, concise.

Society is circular. Circular as in enclosing; circular as in there is no beginning or end, only eternal cycles. We all live within such a circle, influenced and influencing.

The pattern is apparent now; a semblance of a theme begins echoing within the chasm of the grand piano, and it repeats.

So is anyone truly unique? In the essence that they are what they are, and not some manifestation of society, some creature caged in a manufactured box and led around on a leash. We all have a base which shapes what we may become, or perhaps simply what we become. There is no real definition to this base; it is a collage of personality, preferences, character, and beliefs, and it is formed by society. We believe that we contribute to ourselves, but it may simply be a reaction rather than personal influence &endash; the music leads us on, and we follow.

Science calls it the foundation of chaos theory. Or some other intellectual jargon. My personal favorite is the study of complex nonlinear dynamic systems; the title isn't actually repetitive, but it definitely seems that way. Visually, a map is constructed laying out all the possible responses a system is capable of &endash; a web of choices. The observer may see this as a probable outcome situation, but the decision has already been made; chaos theory notes that initial conditions cannot always be known, thus consequential effects can only be predicted through a limited map. So the base is unknown, but the possibilities are not endless.

A gradual crescendo, then the pace picks up slightly. The keys begin to follow each other in faster and faster succession; the dynamics cease fluctuation and increase to a steady forte. I'm playing, yet the notes are appearing naturally, on their own, as if they already existed in my mind and are simply drizzling through my fingers. There is a direction, I just don't know what it is; the music lives and breathes and runs through a previously beaten path.

Take a game of pool, for example. The individual billiard balls each have the potential to travel in an infinite number of directions, but upon being set in motion, there exists only one path which they can take &endash; the web of chaos is reduced to the single solution.

I often wonder if I have the ability to change the flow of my music whenever I please; I question whether free will enables me to bend the notes off a predetermined course, or if I am forever cursed to a beaten ditch, the sides rising too far above me to crawl out. Admittedly, what are our minds but billions of synapses strung together, continually pulsing with electrical signals which have been affected by chemical reactions we deem emotions? Effect follows cause, and it seems even we cannot escape this pattern.

If the billiard balls had free will, they would preserve their infinite potential even at a moment existing after their initial motion. In placing the balls in the exact same starting positions and subjecting them to the exact same reactions, the individual balls would traverse unique patterns each time. But we witness only one such path, and if the scenario were replicated, the path would remain unchanged.

Rhythm shift. The tempo reduces, and the notes drown each other in soft tones. Colors and moods overlap one another, and the music meshes together in a tender waltz. None of this feels unusual, but then again, perhaps it was already thereŠ hidden quietly in the beginning.

I still can't be sure whether I drive the music or the music drives me; maybe the control is irrelevant, and I should simply be cast forth as a note piercing the empty air. We do understand the world as we perceive it, and so perhaps we may delude ourselves into believing our choices are purely personal &endash; our lives are our own and each holds his own will. Regardless, we move on, and there is always a trail extending far beyond the horizon, just over the next crest.

We can only hope the path has not yet been traveled upon.

The melody isolates itself to the few barren notes that it began with, gently touching the air before fading away. A quiet darkness settles over the keys, and the notes begin to trickle down like thin whispers, discovering silence. They never return to their origin.