Endangered Species' Revenge

Over twenty years ago, after a children's recital, one student's well-heeled dad came up to me exclaiming, "You're a...you're a relic, an ARTIFACT!!" The guy exuded so much thrill over his new excavation that I did refrain from the proper response, which would have been approximately, "No, you are a LUNK."
I needed the money.

Yet from what I'm reading online lately, one does wonder. The thoughts flicker past electronics of course--singers chomping on microphones, guitar pedals, hearing-disabled kids--to the sheer VOLUME of life on Industrialized Earth today. It does rather resemble the takeover of an embankment of fern, violets and piggyback plant, by Himalayan blackberries. Once they've gotten a foothold, the bigger, more aggressive species do wipe out entire populations of gentler folk.

Unless they interbreed, of course, like the spotted and barred owls have supposedly resorted to doing...and like a lot of classically trained musicians do now, for a niche and an income. It's simple enough to do, because rock music is so mindless--a wonderfully vacuous set of impulses requiring no burden of talent whatsoever, beyond the conveyance of a sexual prowess or quirk, of some sort. Though perennially hollow, it can be extremely fun.

If Prissy Prim is sounding a little jaded, here, fear not. Today's so-called Realities will only lead her to sit up straighter in her teacher's chair and enjoy a surge of pride at being, quite possibly, the last of the Passenger Pigeon People. Perhaps a different Administration will issue Endangered Species Acts on her behalf, or perhaps not. It's rather nice regardless, realizing that one is so "rare."

As for classical music's practical uses...well, one could always click back to the first couple of posts in this blog, for reminder. On second thought, how many people could actually tell you that the reason everybody in the store is so grumpy, is that the music on the intercom is playing an amorphous 3/4 rhythm in minor mode centered on the lugubrious tone of 'A'?

Or that the neighbor's really annoying lawnmower (in January) vacillates over low 'B' and 'C#', and just can't settle on either?

Or that gurgling streams like to talk on middle 'C' and 'F' alot, which is why they sound so happy; while winds cheering in the trees above generally contain all of the known tones, subtly hovering around a noble 'E'-flat?

A chickadee's voice contains none of them, because it's so high and pure that it's off the spectrum of tone names.

And never, once, have I heard a 'G' emit from nature's mouth.

Hmm. Maybe while the rest of the world is leaping off of its ridiculous precipice, the "Endangereds" could concoct a whole new realm of music--a realm far, far more intricate, sensitive, and rarified than what the hogs gobbled up. Wee, mighty chickadee would teach it, of course.

Because for all of their spectacular predations, our dear hogs have failed to factor in their singlemost vulnerability: Prey grown immune.