Last Christmas, Karen gave me a set of speakers, including a sub-woofer, for my computer. We hooked them up and I didn't know what to do with them. It wasn't until March, or April, that I discovered what I had.
Then one day, in my work, it became necessary for me to listen to Luciano Pavarotti's famed "Nessun Dorma" aria. We have a Pavarotti CD in the house, and I was girding my loins to look for it when I thought about YouTube. I knew about YouTube and understood it as a site where people with a lot of time on their hands created and posted videos for the general amusement of a very small demographic. Little did I know.
I think it was a Google search for "Nessun Dorma" that took me to YouTube. There was a selection, and I clicked on the one at the very top, that had the most page views. Suddenly, there was a screen, and Pavarotti getting ready to sing, then singing, but I couldn't hear anything. I reached for the speaker control, that I had never used, and hit the On button. The walls of the study bowed outward with the force of "Nessun Dorma" from Pavarotti and YouTube. I got it under control and was astonished by the fidelity and power of the audio.
Karen heard the eruption and ran to see. She absolutely loves Pavarotti and this is her favorite aria of his, and so we listened to it until our ears rang.
That was the first day. Since then, I have discovered there are almost no songs that you can't find on YouTube. To a man who was a teenager in the 1950s, with a bunch of 45s in the closet and nothing to play them on now, this was a gold mine. I have listened to so many oldies, flabbergasted by the easy access to such treasure, and the one I always go back to is "Matchbox," written and originally performed by Carl Perkins.
But that's not the version I go to. A wonderful thing about YouTube is the clips you find from television specials that get the old rock and rollers back together, playing the old songs, but with recording techniques vastly improved from the '50s. As an example, I offer you a 1985 clip of Carl Perkins, Ringo Starr, and Eric Clapton, playing "Matchbox." Strap yourself in, and click here.
So this, I discover, is what music really is. Music is a universe train. From the first note to the last, I feel like I can't get off "Matchbox" even if I wanted to. Locally, of course, the music creates sound waves that enter the ear, excite the brain, heat the heart, stimulate the blood, and zoom straight to the feet, which is miraculous enough.
But there is something grander. I am a captive observer, like Einstein, aboard a universe train, powered by a primary motor that is fueled by mathematical vibrations. Music is nothing but mathematics, just as all the physical laws – the universe itself – are mathematics, all these numbers and laws blasted instantaneously into being and spreading out, until on Earth, billions of years later, someone figured out how to tap into that original music vibration with six strings and a fretboard. Strum a G chord, and you are listening all the way back to the beginning of time. Strum a C chord, and in these specialized physics, it shimmers evenly through the universe to all its borders. Hit an E, A and B7 in locomotive rhythm, and the universe starts to rock.
What a good idea it was, then, to include "Johnny B. Goode" in the music launched with the Voyager space probe in 1977. There was a plaque on board, describing us, but it's the music that will turn the trick. Scientists estimate it will be 40,000 years before Voyager might encounter life forms out there. They may have two heads, eight eyes and six legs, but as soon as they listen to "Johnny B. Goode," and look down and see their six feet tapping, they will be sure there's a civilization out there in space that knows what they know.
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