Music of the spheres
THE MUSIC OF THE SPHERES rang throughout existence and broke the silence of a tomblike void. Only the brave and the truly valiant could hear the life-bringing melody of the cosmos spreading in a slow ripple throughout the firmament. The discordant hidden melody of life cascaded from the heavenly dome imbuing every creature worthy of this boon with a vital spark of existence. Every night, it’s cascade of stardust renewed the ancient contract with life. Every night, all lifeforms were again baptised in the cardinal wellspring of existence. The stars granted life, and in return they got to witness all what made humans into the precious and yet frail beings that they were. Love, envy, joy, hate, and above all their need to create beauty. The faraway stars, and the godly beings residing in the magnificence of what orbited in the heavenly domain, doted on these last additions to the spiritual realms as any zealous parent does with their progeny.
The light was a beacon of peace, a call to calmness, a promise of unity and ceasing of pain.
And this night, it tried to reach another lost soul caught in the timeworn cosmic struggle antecedent to all mortal life.
In the eternal void of the primordial dark, a soul was called forth. First, there was a pull, tugging on his very being, his essence. The being who couldn’t remember anything of what he was or who he might be, swirled incessantly surrounded by a deep dark – an abyss so vast that its gloomy endless shadows made the witching-hour seem like it radiated light. The surrounding void was bit by bit, memory by memory, dismantling what little was left of him. His sense of self, worldly attachments, down to each and every single atom, his skin and muscle and bones, everything was reduced to the smallest particle. Pain blinded his thinking, all the totality of what made the nameless warrior a human, alive. This assault on his senses was followed by the draining of every lingering trace of any earthly perceptions.
The stifling endless dark was slowly circling tighter and tighter around this stricken soul. Obscured faces, given away by their glowing blue-white eyes, peered through a gargantuan mound erected on the lost and forgotten skeletal remains of a lost majestic civilisation. If the many had succumbed, how could a lone broken soul survive?
His eyes hurt from a blistering series of visions of what he knew were yet couldn’t be true. Assaulted by a vortex of words and images, he succumbed to their incessant barrage.
All is covered in dismal lugubrious dusk. I feel weightless, unbound by any chains,
Bodily or mentally free in the all-surrounding eventide,
Free in my lightless tomb, I ask myself:
“Where am I?” “Who am I?”
“When will my torment end?”
When all hope was lost, a blast of purifying, raw, primal energy roamed through every particle of his being. A current of pure lifeforce surged through all that was his, leaving the warrior uncertain of where he began or ended, all dimming in a flickering echo of loss. A sense of freedom was slowly gleaming in his very essence, in that part which clung to what he guessed was his tortured remnant of a soul. He was intrigued by this persistent urge to cling to life, and curiosity made him chase the fear away and pursue this mysterious call.
A visitor in the strangest of dreams, he swam in an endless bewildering mystification. A world unknown yet strangely familiar. Nothing made sense, apart from an intense persistent feeling in his very core telling him to hold on at all costs, to whatever he could grasp. He felt a pull from every direction. One force was trying its utmost to undo him, while another offered a glimmer of light which lit in him a flickering hope. And as he was unmade, there was one thing that seemed to bring him back. An impression, a belonging, to something that he could no longer remember, but that whispered promises of hope.
Slowly, ever so slowly, it released a part of him that he wasn’t aware he still possessed. A phantom vestige resonated deep inside him. What felt like a forgotten memory that was or might not have been his reverberated within his spirit adding power to his growing form. An echo of what might have been his very essence slowly flickered to life.
The byways of incessant agony dripped tortuously bit by bit, deeper and deeper, in a bundle of agonising awareness that had started awakening an inner image of what he might have been, and possibly still was. Spinning in a harrowing whirlwind of terrorising hope, for the first time in what seemed like many eternities - countless, impossible iterations of forever. He tried to push down the mutilating pain inundating his being by concentrating on this strange force which felt so strongly of life and hope.
They say hope is the last to die, in many ways it’s what makes a human what he is.
The unbearable screams of sentience, the delirious terror of a timed lifespan, an existence built on the colossal piles of corpses, is what surmises the sad, agonising, life of mortals. But only suffering can make one aware of beauty. Only anguish and torment can spark the flame of existence that burns the brightest for a race where every second counts. Cursed with being sentient of our finitude, we live in a purgatory of loving and losing what’s dearest. But it is this fear of being deprived of this flimsy spark of life that imbues mortality with a passion that surpasses any immortal.
The bright echo awoke a dire need for what seemed to elude his reasoning and remembrance.
The push to hope and the need to cling to life felt strange to one who had forgotten he had ever lived. A compulsion from within resonated throughout his half- formed self, telling him to fight with all he had. His flicker of being, the sole bastion of reason in an ocean of primordial nothingness. A silent command issued from the unknown presence imbued in him an intrinsic instinct of survival:
“A warrior never concedes… not even to the sweet lure of eternal bliss.”
It almost felt like his outer reality was being remade as his inner world expanded. Every addition to his being was mirrored by the dark releasing some of its hold on what surrounded him. The warrior, even emptied as he was, felt a spark of light and hope pull him back. What lived beyond knowledge fuelled the last element that remained of what had been him. Light loves all its children, and even from the cosmic tomb where sacrifice has cast them. Light will always guide the worthy.
This kind and benevolent feeling sparked in his lost self, a sense of belonging, of home, hearth, warmth and safety. A melodic voice casts away the dark and all could be heard is their glorious song:
“Life is pain, and I see in its shadow the death of billions. But pain is life, and to become a protector of it you need to see existence twist itself inside out.”
The voice resonated again in the void:
“Your doubts must be washed in fire and reforged in faith. You must not mimic life but champion it in order to find the path out of here. We were born in the dark before we knew the light of the sun, so you must battle your way from the temptation of letting go and joining the blissful void, but instead see the truth that shadows your back and announces your fate.
“Emerge from darkness stronger still, exorcise weakness and embrace faith. Search for the secret song that will open the hidden door; only the desperate pleading of dying life can glance past infinity and find deliverance. If you let pain overcome your soul, you will be entombed in the rancid tyranny of the primordial dark, a discordant remnant of a Life-song twisted in eternity, always out of harmony.
Your pain is the only constant in this labyrinth of night, until you learn to let go of what was and accept your new role you won’t regain your humanity. Hear the faint song that will pave your way out of these regions of sorrow and woeful shades - where neither light nor life can ever dwell.”
In utter darkness this mesmerising phantasmagorical declamation discharged his fear and brought forth the end of the existential terror that screamed from all that was him.
He felt stuck in place, slowly being sucked in from under his feet while the rest of him grasped for hold of any anchor that would free him from this agony. The terror of sinking, disappearing, of his heartbeat mirroring the frantic screams coming out of him. The terror of being but not knowing why or where or how.
Petrified but feeling like he’s travelling eternity. All is too much, he is too little.
His being is made and unmade at the speed of light. What’s left is only a vague ghost of consciousness tearing through the pain, screaming for release, grasping for understanding, for the nothingness to end, for reality to stop spinning, for anything but this agonising torture.
Then a memory resurfaces:
Hell is where who you are meets all the possibilities of a wasted existence. Where are you?
What…are…you? Where…are… you?
Echoed a thought in the infinite dark that engulfed him.
Ever so slowly, he regained a sense of how the thoughts and pain, and terror were actually part of him. He couldn’t remember much of his past, or why he was here, but a spark of discernment cascaded over each segment of his being, reawakening a partial fragmented memory sequence, restoring the foundations of a broken self.
Spiralling into a vortex of memories past, present and never his. He witnessed all as an outsider, words and images stuck in him against his will.
Perturbing visions of todays and tomorrows, probably of all the days and all the morrows. A whispered command of faith, valour, and courage was pressed on his soul. Tempest and thunder, luminescent fulmination and discharge were the heralds of his tomorrow.
He felt a spark of light taking possession of his soul, giving him hope, making him hold on. As he was unmade, there was one thing that seemed to pull him back. A feeling, a belonging, to something that he now couldn’t remember, but even unknowing and defragmented, the light whispers of hope made him choose this warm remnant of a life far gone as the foundation of himself.
Overwhelmed, he collapsed on unknown ground, a strange island that somehow floated alone where all else was void. Unsure, but lacking the ability to know fear, he felt that so much was lost. The desecration and defamation that followed him here.
What was lost, what it meant, escaped him. He noticed a long stalk climbing from the ground behind him and disappearing in the clouds above. He felt a presence, a voice in the wind, insisting he tried to grasp every trace of what was stolen and lost.
But then a song broke through the enchantment and the familiar veil of warmth condensed in a beautiful form. The larger than life, resplendent apparition leaned down pulling the broken warrior in a fatherly embrace, singing a song of long-lost wonder and fearless faith. Light personified resonated through creation chasing away all traces of lingering darkness and its insipid invitations.
Down and ahead a dark stone followed another until a path formed to where a spring materialised.
Tonight, you will wonder, tomorrow you will wake up in a world of wonder.
Blackness slowly departed the broken reality.
Golden light outlined a bridge of new shapes that painted themselves into existence, shrouding the darkness away from aggregate homogeneity.
They broke eternity,
And claimed the realm of immortality. A pilgrimage of impossible outcomes,
Broke the boundaries between the inner sanctum and the outer nave. In the dark and on an instant,
They went forward, escaping extinction.
Meanwhile the warning of the Light resonates through its creation. The mind escapes leaving the body animated by animal instincts,
A thought that is forever,
Drags through eternity, Breaches between worlds,
Announcing the birth of Light’s chosen ones.
Demi-gods tasked to battle the dark. Delineating the victories of Light over Dark.
Their humanhood extinguished to give life a new hope. Blackness fell through the broken reality,
Golden light outlined the newcomer,
As a new shape painted itself into existence, Shrouding the darkness away
They broke eternity,
And claimed the realm of immortality as the last bastion for helping humanity.
Published in Issue 20 of the Wells Street Journal, 2023, London, UK. (re-edited March, 2024)
https://wellsstreetjournal.com/issue-twenty-the-writers-playlist/