I was alone, listening to a recording of a lecture by Kevin McIlvoy. We call him Mc (said ‘Mac”). He writes ephemeral stories of delicacy and grace, strange music. Here’s a little taste from “Ladies room”:
“As he knew they would, the three
ghosts appeared again in the Ladies Room of The Pea Vine at 4:30 AM, the middle
of his shift. It was May 7, his ninetieth birthday. Len's checklist of tasks
more or less done, he listened in.”
The rest
can be found at: "Ladies Room"
Mc was
lecturing a group of students about dynamic balance in fiction and poetry, and
as always for me, it was a struggle trying to get it. Then I do get it. Then I don't. It’s like that with his
thoughts about writing,
always just above my fingertips reaching up.
He was
talking about the Wolf Tone. The lecture can be found on line. “The Equilibrist and The Dynamist” at http://www.wwcmfa.org/mfa-store/store-beta-test/ He was saying that:
“A person who wants that unique
sound of John Lee Hooker on a song like “The Waterfront” or “Stop Now Baby”
will want a guitar that in open tuning has a crunch – ha – howl— whenever the F# is fingered on any fret. That flawed wonder is called the Wolf Tone.”
The Wolf
Tone is an unavoidable flaw in a perfect cello. It is the note where the harmonics
of string, instrument, bow, player, pin, tailpiece, neck, body, bridge and
sound bar conspire in to depart from harmonic balance. Dissonance is the word Mc does not use. The sound of it can be found here: Wolf Tone
Why would
anyone want it?
You have to
drive through a lot of dry country to leave Southern California going east—
very orderly dry country. Mc had told me, “Biologist and geologists and
physicists assert that symmetrical forms and even quasi-symmetrical forms in
nature are extremely rare.” This is certainly true, but there is a sameness, a
coherence in the desert. Driving my perfect car, in perfect comfort, the Joshua
trees, chickweed, creosote and cactus seemed in perfect balance with the raw
rock faces of the mountains. The desert was certainly nothing like Mc’s term
for dynamic balance, “…the effect of work that in substance and style is, at
the very same moment, on the verge of falling into and falling out of balance.” More here: Experts on the Wolf Tone
Even the
chaotic weather of that day seemed in harmony with the desert. Asymmetric winter light
through clouds running east after a storm. I came down the pass toward the lake and saw
three towers glowing in the basin, the dried lake itself seemed filled with
silver waters. Strange. Otherworldly.
This was the Wolf Tone. This was dynamic balance, the beauty of impossible symmetry spread across the coherence of the desert.
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