Hey, 2020. We start your second half today – July 1.
You’ve probably seen the memes: worst year ever, a car wreck piled onto a train wreck stacked atop a plane crash.
One image repurposed for you presents a musical score headlined “If 2020 was a piece of music.”
The score, created years ago, is titled “Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz,” with a notation that it’s “Based on a Cro-magnon skinning chant.” Instructions for musicians suggest playing “Like a Dirigible” and direct when to “release the penguins.”
The score includes 65,536th notes – eighth notes times 14 – and a section where fast notes switch between extremely loud and very soft from one to the next.
An unplayable mess.
Like you, 2020. You unlivable year.
Except not.
We’re living through your pileups. Neither pandemic nor the incompetent government response to pandemic, nor broken politics and demagogic hyper-partisanship, nor fears that all has gone to hell, will put us off mastering your challenges.
We may even end your reign improved, with a vaccine and racial justice.
We’re battered but not cowed, you unruly mess.
What we’ve said to other years
2021: Hesitant New Year!
2022: Dear 2022: Please bring better
Listen to “Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz”
A version of the late John Stump’s “Faerie’s Aire and Death Waltz” created, according to the YouTube performance notes, using 16 synthesizers.
The only connection between the linked YouTube video and Stump’s original work is the false (and misspelled!) attribution of the title. The comments below the video point to video game music; the audio most certainly has nothing to do with the musical notation.