Sonnet 16

This song is dedicated to Kinsley.

Avalon has created a new name…for a new Century!

Well, first of all this is an exercise in the development of a 12-tone musical theory…Surprisingly, it has relevance with science!

The thing is…there has been no real advancement in music theory since Haydn developed 7-tone theory during the time that he was writing his first ten symphonies….I have been working on a 12-tone theory since the 1960s…finally the theory has reached a maturity…I have had 20 breakthroughs during the past four years…recently I have been focusing upon using the Circle of 5ths…..

However, as I was working on this 2nd version of Sonnet 16…a miraculous thing happened….I happened to realize that writing this song has also moved us towards proving that every atom possesses Consciousness…

as wild as that sounds! But it is True!

Let us recount…what has happened….

So we have had one version of Shakespeare’s Sonnet 16 on the web site…and here is a second version…Why a second one?…Well, we have had feedback from one member of our Creative Cluster…Fire Mountain Tribe…Love Song Band….San Francisco Bay Area….he pointed out that the music while innovative and interesting…still sounded like music he has heard before…and as a left hemispheric dominant person in his brain…the music at times sounded a bit sad…..

Well, his criticisms struck a chord with me…I examined the song as it was…and found that indeed I had not actually adhered to the demands of a truly 12-tone scale piece…I had moved a bit among the keys from time to time…however, I had actually remained in certain areas for extended amounts of time…which was not truly 12-tone but more like 7 tone with changes from one key to another here and there…

So this time I have made the following changes…First, I have attempted to move, move, move utilizing the Circle of Fifths as I did before…but move quickly from the left side of the Circle to the right…in almost every phrase of the music….Also I have tried to overlap triads constantly…three and four deep…which tends to keep a piece in 12-tone scale…the melody often represents another level of overlap…as one note with its overtones…can represent a triad…so actually chords are changing every moment in the song…Second, I have avoided music that sounds beautiful to me as a right hemispheric person…and attempted to write music that is more rewarding for all…

And third…in my researches regarding a Cosmic theology and breakthroughs in a Science of Everything…I have studied intensely the

mediaeval theories of alchemy…which sounds like I am surrendering to a pagan, naive conception formed by pre-scientific peoples…The fact is, I have found that several people like Goethe and James Joyce enlisted many of the ideas from the Hermetic theories….Goethe was the first to use these ideas in drama….and Joyce, in literature….now we are using them in music….

So how is this song related to alchemic principles?…I have used two principles…first, the theory of randomness…like ‘stream of consciousness’ in literature, one must have confidence that using a selection randomly from a million options at hand…will somehow render a satisfactory product….and two there is the Hermetic Circle of Colors…that can help guide the overall shape of the randomness…First, in 12-tone scale work, using overlapping of triads, I have over a million chords to choose from at any one time…but many combinations are disastrous…thus to avoid problems I utilized the fact that I have found a relationship between the Hermetic Circle of Colors and the Circle of 5ths in music theory…What is the Circle of 5ths…Well, each scale in music theory possesses seven notes…some scales have sharps and some have flats…At the top of the circle, is the key of C which has neither sharps or flats….then one proceeds down the left side of the circle increasing one flat at a time…the keys of F, Bflat, Eflat, Aflat, Dflat and finally Gflat with 6flats…Then back to the top, we progress down the right sides of the Circle…one sharp added at a time…G, D, A, B, and Fsharp…I have found that this pattern of scales corresponds to the Hermetic Circle of Colors…That is, in the song…I am moving constantly from darker colors to brighter colors…from the ‘flat’ side of the Circle to the ‘sharp’ side consistently…What I mean is…on the ‘dark’ side there are three colors…starting at the bottom of the circle, we move upwards…. with violet, then blue, then green…these colors correspond to the keys of… Gflat,Dflat… then Aflat, Bflat…then Fmajor and Cmajor…then moving downwards…on the ‘bright’ side of the Circle…there is yellow, orange and red…corresponding to the keys….Gmajor, Dmajor…the latter of which is the brightest key on the piano…corresponding to gold…then Amajor, and Emajor…and then Bmajor and Fsharp major…On a piano with tempered scales…Fsharp major and G flat major are the same…meeting at the bottom of the Circle…In the end of the song…I end up with a chord that has an Aflat triad overlapped with a A natural triad…if the Circle of Colors duplicates the color sequence of a rainbow moving backwards from red to violet…then I have chords near the bottom of the Circle at the end…Aflat and A natural played overlapped as one chord….The beginning of the rainbow…and the end are made One…which is a miracle of 12-tone scale theory…and at the very end….I end up with Fsharp major/Gfllat major which in color theory is equivalent to purple …which is a triumph…At the end…we have discovered the Philosopher’s Stone…we have transformed common chords and triads…by means of 12-tone theory…into alchemic gold…Although, as I have said… yellow, the color of gold, actually corresponds to the key of D …and should be, it would seem, the ultimate alchemical aim…However, in alchemic theory a very deep red, violet, purple, or iridescent stage supersedes it…because it supposedly includes all the colors…F sharp/ Gflat which as I have said in this conception…is the same chord… is the counterpart to purple on the alchemic Circle of Colors….and thus is…a chord closest to God…and that is the destination…towards which every melody…and every chord in the piece…strives for…to rest at peace in, with…at the end…the color of the Philosopher’s Stone…the counterpart…to the Holy Grail….

I was going to stop here with this introduction to the second version of Sonnet 16 by Shakespeare….but I must declare something…at this point…

Like alchemy I have filled the song with chords, chords, and chords…as I have said…an alchemist has faith that ultimately enough information, enough material will allow Truth, Beauty, Art to emerge by itself…. So it was that I used every triad that exists between the octaves on the piano keyboard… overlapping triads three and four deep….and so there are over a million possible combinations…this is like taking a multitude of possibilities, possible sounds and attempting to create Gold…like Goethe and Joyce before…as I say, I have attempted to make Art…Truth, and Beauty….from a mass of what seems to be impossibly great number of inputs…In the end…I think I was somewhat successful…As Nietzsche would say…asserting his admiration for the classical aesthetic…but also an alchemic concern…I used the alchemic Circle of Colors as an instrument to impart a unified coordination of parts and the subordination of each part to the Whole…But success in this song…if such success exists… is not a validation of the alchemic confidence in the ability of randomness to converge towards a goal…towards Truth, Beauty, Art…I can declare that conclusion right now!…For two months I made little progress at all…I should have known….James Joyce certainly showed where randomness takes us…Nowhere!….The real shocker is this…An idea suddenly occurred to me…Isn’t Darwinism a sort of alchemy?….billions of years of random events supposedly created Life….I don’t think so….If I was somewhat successful in this alchemic experiment…it was not the result of any random occurrence… The Circle of Colors theory did help me keep the project in 12-tone scale…But instead of randomness…all the time..there was something… someone…’looking out’….a consciousness making things happen…otherwise progress would never have been made…

Before I attempted this experiment I was 85 percent certain of a certain hypothesis being True…and now as a result of this exercise I hereby declare that I am satisfy that my hypothesis possesses a 100 percent probability of being True…as unlikely as it may seem…It a conclusion drawn from the Science of Everything in seven different disciplines…I am convinced…that every atom…possesses Consciousness!…. Alchemy is based on empirical Truths..accepted without any explanation concerning cause…because in the end…there can only be one cause for miracles like Life having appeared….We are looking for Life on other planets…when the fact is…there is existence…there is consciousness…all around us…filling every crevice… igniting every explosion….in the Cosmos!!!!! There is a piece of God…inside of each of us….

Thank you.

Bibliographical Notes

So what happened here was that I have conducted an experiment…

Goethe came up with experiments to test alchemic propositions…but those experiments were half conceptual…not real ‘scientific’ experiments…Then James Joyce showed us that we don’t have to be in a laboratory at all… to test a hypothesis…He wrote two books that displayed a new kind of experimentation…and each case desperately tried to show that a book of information compiled randomly could, would produce art…The experiment was not in vain…for he has shown us that for sure…that the opposite is True…We can now safely say…that randomness does not converge…there is no way to get Gold from dirt…unless somehow Consciousness is involved…

I have a new Science of Everything…and a new Scientific Method…my new Science places the social sciences on a biological base because we know now that humans are…in fact…with no debate…animals…DNA tells us this is true…Therefore, the social sciences…that is, the Science of Man and Woman must be biological…In my book, Man and the Cosmos…The Science of Everything…I have taken the first steps towards placing the social sciences on a biological base…When this approach is taken..the social sciences are then able to talk to each other, in the same language, and they can talk to the biological and physical sciences also…because all disciplines are One now… they are now Truly a Science…of Everything…This new science is extremely useful now…because all the easy things have been discovered now…we are left with things that either too small or are moving to fast to be measured with the instruments we have…Thus, in addition to a new Science…we need a new Scientific Method to establish Truth…one that is more circumstantial, more probabilistic in nature….

And as Joyce has shown…we need a new way of conducting experiments…and Joyce’s books and the creation of this song are demonstrations of how such experimentation is to take place…

As I say…when I started the experiment, I was 85 percent certain that every atom possesses consciousness…based on seven different disciplines which included several of the ones from the new Science of Man and Woman…As I say…how I got to this probability is detailed in my book….Man and the Cosmos…The Science of Everything…By the time I completed this experiment…this song…right here…right now!… I was close to 100 percent certain that my hypothesis concerning atoms and consciousness is true…I can’t be exactly 100 percent certain…because I have not taken a hydrogen ion and tested to see if it is straining,, endeavoring to communicate with the world around it….so my certainty is probabilistic at this point…somewhere around 99.99999…percent certain that my hypothesis is True…

And I used alchemy to move from 85 percent certainty to close to 100 percent…Alchemy has always been an empirical process…As I have said, one looks at dirt and notices that diamonds appear…this part of alchemy came from Egyptian metallurgy….Basically, the alchemical process consisted of ‘purifying’ various substances in order to form the Philosopher’s Stone…the goal of the Hermetic Art. Metaphorically, this purification was represented as killing the body of a metal to release its soul and accomplish its rebirth as Gold. Many alchemists, whether for the Love of knowledge or the love of wealth, worked on the physical plane, trying to transmute base metals into Gold…but others felt that the process was spiritual only… concerned with the perfection of the soul… Alchemy became focused upon the regeneration of the human soul from its present sense-immersed state into the perfection and nobility of that Divine condition in which it was originally created…. Alchemists moved from making Gold from dust to an universal transmutation of all things…into some divine and imperishable substance.

Well, in the cases of Goethe and James Joyce, they felt that if they could fill their creations with Life and information, that somehow in the end Art would emerge,,,

So what does this have to do with hydrogen ions, the I…and that every atom possesses consciousness?…Well, when one studies alchemy…as strange and pathetic as much of this exercise might appear…one suddenly realizes that Darwinism is founded upon exactly these propositions…..From the dirt of the earth…Life has emerged….and it was all a result of random occurrences…. supposedly…a transmutation of base materials into the elixir..of Life!!!!

Of course, many of us have doubted that plain randomness could ever have created anything as complicated as Life…the same doubt that most of us have that alchemic exercises could ever produce Gold….from dirt….

If alchemy has any Truth…it always has lain buried in deep unexamined processes….there has been no search for first causes…Now it appears…that even chemical processes may be infused with Consciousness…scientists have never dained to conjecture that dirt might possess Consciousness…As I have said…I have used my Science of Everything to come up with a probability that every atom has consciousness of about 85 percent…..all I needed was a nudge…and we could be close to certainty..

So a study of an alchemic situation, puzzle…is a kin to studying if randomness actually is a good hypothesis for Darwinism…because both alchemy and Darwinism are based upon approximately the same theories of random generation of perfection….

My composition of music for Shakespeare’s Sonnet 16…began with the alchemic Circle of Colors…which corresponds with the Circle of 5ths of the music theorist…and I could take a few months and see if pure randomness could take me from a multitude of possible chords…some one million possibilities…to a work of Art…And my conclusion is…. No!…As I have said…if perfection is to be achieved either in a musical composition or in building up a form of Life…Consciousness of some sort must be involved…randomness does not converge!!! I am certain that can be proved mathematically. My experiment with musical alchemy has raised the probability of my hypothesis concerning atoms to virtually 100 percent. Thus I can assert…that every atom…possesses Consciousness…A stream of hydrogen ions created the first Life…and a relic of this first creation process exists today…in the process of photosynthesis….[see my minibooks on this subject]…..

DiBernard, Barbara, Alchemy and Finnegans Wake (Albany, N.Y.: University of New York Press, 1980), 163pp.

Gray, Ronald Douglas, A Study of Alchemical Symbolism in Goethe’s Literary and Scientific Works (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1952, 2010), 312pp.