2nd’s a Winner

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Marius Masalar/Unsplash

BELLA VOGT, staff writer

I have much to say about minor seconds
Perhaps because two notes, each a half step apart, was all that stuck from AP Music Theory (jokes…)

 

They can be used on a variety of occasions
A versatile tool
An endless count of meanings

 

The clash entirely contradicts itself
Sometimes fierce, intensely violent
Other times a gentle, tranquil descent
A hypnotic canticle
Pair the two together and you have an inharmonious closure
A story far more fervent than the redundant plagal cadence

 

And you can feel the sound
The closeness
The intimacy
Two notes, just barely separate
Longing to unite
And only a step away
They are in agony
Just out of reach
Their anguish is the fuel of the feeling
Our feelings
The goosebumps emerging atop the skin
The warm ringing through the bones
The tingling deep within the brain

 

We are all minor seconds
Some the climax to a grand finale
Others the unkind dip underscoring the villain
Some the soft serenity of an ode or hymn
Others the harsh clash of an operatic
Some perfectly timed and tuned
Others on accident due to a case of tone deafness
Some may seem more appealing than others,
However,
a population thrives on such diversity

 

It’s led me to wonder:
Where do I fall?
My actions demonstrate a vast mix of beauty, anguish, and opacity
How am I to be confined to a single label,
A single minor second?

 

I’m then led to wonder something else.

 

 Are we to be confined to one sound,
One feeling
One characteristic?
Perhaps diversity exists because of the multitudes of sound we offer
The complexity and variance between each decision,
each action,
all reflect more than simply one type of minor second
If we continued to sound the same, the music our world composed would become repetitive
Evolution requires change
New verses
The music must adapt and evolve

I’ve experienced a vast variety of minor seconds in this lifetime.