Ambient Drone and Apocalypse

Abstract

Celer and The End of Happiness A good time to listen to Celer's music is early in the morning, around three o'clock. Any later, and road noise would drown it out. In the album Salvaged Violets, high--and low-pitched tones seep in, barely perceptible even on headphones. They are produced on synthesizers, processors of various sorts, and acoustic instruments, but their timbre is uniformly fragile. There are no abrupt attacks, and decays are always attenuated. These tones are too isolated to congeal into harmony; they merely align with each other momentarily, before washing out with the tide. The disc player spins, and the laser reads the data. Naturally, this playback is identical to every other. It will be the same tomorrow, and however many tomorrows remain. I could well play this recording every morning, indefinitely, or at least until the electrical grid collapses. It would matter just as much to me if I heard it constantly, from now until the end. Salvaged Violets might sound like other recent examples of pretty, quiet music. But this impression gives way with repeated listening, especially around the nine-minute mark. The sudden influx of rapidly oscillating drones, colliding as they compete for the same space, proves that this is not just a touristic celebration of beautiful sounds. This is the moment when one's toes clench the precipice shortly before jumping, or the moment immediately preceding the apocalypse. Celer's music, as with so much ambient drone, speaks of the end of time, the end of the world, and all the unresolvable dilemmas that accompany such ends. Croesus was a Lydian king who believed himself blessed. He sought confirmation from Solon of Athens, the lawmaker revered for his wisdom. Croesus asks Solon, Who is the happiest of all men?, whereupon Solon answers with stories of humble men who live to old age in obscurity, or else who die young in their sleep after winning favor from some god. But Croesus wanted Solon to name him the happiest. Solon responds, [Mark] this: until he is dead, keep the word 'happy' in reserve. Till then, he is not happy, but only lucky. (1) This passage from Herodotus is famous, but what follows is more important. Solon admonishes Croesus to look to the end, rather than the present. Croesus dismisses Solon, and only later learns the meaning in Solon's words. He loses a son in a hunting accident. He concludes two years of mourning with the decision to attack the Persians, and his oracle responds that he will destroy a great empire. (2) Croesus is foolish enough to hear a presentiment of the fall of Persia, but the empire to fall is his own. It would then appear that Croesus is about to reach his own end as the prisoner of the Persian tyrant Cyrus. He is about to be burned alive on a pyre. As the flames char Croesus' hair, Cyrus is moved to spare Croesus, but his men cannot stop the fire's spread. Croesus prays to Apollo for mercy, clouds rush in on what was a perfectly clear sky, and rains put out the fire that was to mark Croesus's final, unhappy ending. Croesus spends the rest of his days as a guest and prisoner in the Persian court, trotted out anytime his captors seek counsel on the behavior of an enemy or the proper course of war. It may well be that Croesus narrowly missed a horrible ending to what had been a blessed life, but strangest of all is his subsequent resurrection, the turnabout that made a king into a slave, a ruler into an advisor. I feel great joy, and great excitement. Something wonderful is coming--liberation from our bodies--but it is also something terrible. Billions of people will suffer. There is no way for me to justify how I could feel happy, by what right I can smile given what I know. And it's unclear whether what I feel is even happiness at all. How can it be, if it cannot last? One could rewrite the opening of the Nicomachean Ethics with apocalypse in mind: Every art and every inquiry, and similarly every action and choice, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim. …