A song has been beating it's way through my head for days. It's deep, dark and foreboding tones marching in and out.
The song is The Edison Museum by They Might be Giants. I was hoping to be able to find a nice midi file to post, so that you could hear this piece. I does an amazing job of fitting with the mood of the lyrics. I think that you could probably connect the lyrics with the midi file without ever hearing the song.


The Edison Museum, not open to the public
Its haunted towers rise into the clouds above it
Folks drive in from out of town to gaze in amazement when they see it
Just outside the gate, I look into the courtyard
Underneath the gathering thunderstorm
Through the iron bars, I see the Black Mariah
Revolving slowly on its platform
In the topmost tower, a light burns dim
A coiling filament glowing within
The Edison Museum, once a bustling factory,
Today's but a darkened cobweb-covered hive of industry
The tallest, widest, and most famous
Haunted mansion in New Jersey
Behind a wooden door, the voice of Thomas Alva
Recites a poem on a phonograph
Ghosts float up the stair
Like silent moving pictures
The loyal phantoms of his in-house staff
A wondrous place it is, there can be no doubt
But no one ever goes in
And no one ever goes out
So when your children quarrel, and nothing seems to quell them
Just tell them that you'll take them to the Edison Museum
The largest independently owned and operated
Mausoleum



I don't know what it is about this song, but it has invaded me. There are days where I surprise myself by whistling it. I don't know nearly enough about music. This is especially true as I am amazed by the art form. I am also amazed when I consider that music is little more than math. I don't understand how it works, but there is a beautiful formula saying that this note is complementary to these notes. It is analogous to a color wheel with huge array of colors and and a complex system of complementaries and contradictories. Wouldn't it be wonderful to know, just by looking or hearing, the complementaries of any note or color? To be able to walk the scales on a pianos keyboard simply because it makes sense? To be able to play or paint as easily as one can do his or her 9's times-tables? Hell, I would be happy to be able to do it like a me in the 7th grade when I struggled daily with my 9's. Even that struggling child having a better grasp than those of us who are so unlucky as to fall on the other side of that horrible divide that is the separation of the analytical mind and the artistic one. Even more troubling for those of us trying to swing between the sides. Those to who the science of art makes sense, but cannot create it. Those that can show you the mathematics of music, but cannot create it. Or those able to regurgitate the theory to re-create the formula of the song, but without the passion.
What is art without that passion?
-Is it science?

What is music without love?
-Is it mathematics?