Being an observer wasn't as simple as Cook had made it sound. Perhaps back on Earth, I could just walk around with my eyes and ears open, take note of things, and be satisfied with the result. But in this environment, surrounded by all these strange creatures, I’m lost. Something as simple as listening to music tied my brain in knots so badly that Pearl and Babaru had to lead me out of the café again. Pearl's beauty sleep must’ve been interrupted. Babaru seemed to deliberately leave many meows untranslated.
I really enjoy listening to music. It has always provided me with an escape and a whole world to immerse myself in. The spaces between different instruments are like alleys and valleys where I can walk, swim, and fly. The bass vibrates, sometimes soft, sometimes embracing, sometimes even hard. The precise percussion beats appear as light, wood-colored dots that border the spherical, often darker shapes of the lower frequencies. The higher-pitched instruments make incisions, strike jagged holes, and even flash across a giant multidimensional fabric in which the notes crisscross each other. It may seem chaotic, but once you tune into it, everything falls into place.
Or that's how I've always enjoyed my music. Whether it was Led Zeppelin, Mozart, or a playlist of house music. It had a beginning, middle, and end. Music lives in the fourth dimension. It depends completely on time. But what if it's not like that everywhere?
And it isn't. A species that often visits the café arrived earlier. They are called Zumbazumbanom. They experience things in ways my mind can't even process as healthy. The café's jukebox is home to a very special music player. I'll tell you more about her later. She can play music my way, and then the Zumbazumbanom way. And, as I understand it, even in more exotic ways. But as I discovered, the Zumbazumbanom way doesn't suit me. It didn't seem to affect the others. From Pearl's short and ambiguous remarks, I got the impression that I need to toughen up. It's probably the same thing Winston told me about earlier: getting used to things.
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Zumbazumbanom are smooth balls. They look like giant soap bubbles, except they cannot be popped. They don't come to the café to eat or drink, but to listen to music. Don't even know how they'd eat. In their home world, music doesn't exist at all. The reason for this is apparently that they are unable to enjoy music as a continuous, flowing stream. It has to come all at once. And I'm not talking about a microsecond-long period, but a point in time even smaller than Planck time. "In a jiffy" is the best term I can come up with at the moment.
During their brief visit to the café, these strange bubbles listened to one of Beethoven's symphonies, the entire Beatles catalog, and Darude's Sandstorm. All of this poured out of the speakers in a single timeless moment. My mind couldn't handle it. I didn't even hear anything, because it all happened somewhere outside of time. My open mind proved to be my worst enemy here. It tried to comprehend the cacophony it was receiving, but was incapable of doing so. This was the first time I ever got a migraine from music.
The headache has been gone for a long time. It was practically over by the time I turned on my lamp. But my numbness forced me to just stare into the distance. My brain kept trying to catch up with all the music fed into it too fast. No, not too fast. Music needs speed and duration. And there was none.
The strangest thing about this is that I now find myself able to recall all the lyrics from the Beatles' discography and hum along to Sandstorm. I may not be able to name the symphony I heard, but it has now become an earworm. The whole damn symphony. We'll see if this way of listening to music will be useful for learning a new language.
Till next time.
- Johnny