Music Mosaic

With eyes closed and a mind open like a blank canvas, I heard this instrumental piece for the first time. Without any outside influence besides my feelings, my thoughts, and the elements of the music, numbers began to fiercely penetrate the blank canvas. They came in many ways, but none of them were enjoyable. The fear that numbers can create in our lives accompanies the scary dark feeling of the music perfectly, especially when the volume rises in a way that makes you feel like it’s getting closer to you. It’s the same pit in your stomach that comes when you can feel the tuition deadline approaching around the corner, or you know you are going to have to provide for a family one day.

Annie Dillard says that natural sights tend to happen in a “now you see it, now you don’t” way. That natural and completely weird experience of overbearing numbers hasn’t returned. As I was creating the images, I would listen to the song and close my eyes again trying to get a second look at what I was creating these images after, but I could never get that glimpse - only through the memory of the actual experience. Nature can’t be forced. That’s what makes it so visually exciting!

Each of these images represents my thoughts either during or after that trippy and natural experience. The first is my way of showing what I saw. The rest represent thoughts that have entered in my mind as I tried to sort through why numbers are scary.

The music mosaic as a whole represents a combination of two different types of inspiration that can be compared to David A. Bednar’s talk entitled The Spirit of Revelation. The first is sudden, instant, and obvious. This flip of a light switch type inspiration happened when I first saw all the numbers at once. Later, as I put the meaning of that image and those numbers together and discovered personal applications of those numbers to my life, a slow, steady, and prolonged process occurred much like the slow yet powerful progression of sunlight during a sunrise.

One of the images contains a single figure, the number 1. Because it is the only object in the frame, it represents loneliness. Music and images can be so related. In fact, as I was putting this image together, the song “One” from the animated film Recess: School’s Out played over and over in my head. I looked up the song on YouTube and there is a very similar shot in the film. 

 The space is wide and open, while the subject is small and unaccompanied. A feeling that can be expressed both visually, emotionally, and musically. The lonely violins in the song are the only instrument playing in the piece. You won’t hear any percussion. You won’t hear anything, except violins.

The last two images are placed next to each other in order to give a contrast between numbers and letters. Unlike groups of numbers, groups of letters can be put together to have real meaning, and elicit memories, thoughts, and emotions.