My Quest For Combinations

"We can't think with words that we don't have."

-Hank Green from his vlogbrothers YouTube channel.

Though his video wasn't really about this topic, phrases like these always make me think. Finding the right words have been a fascination of mine for a long time. Whether to properly describe, define, or explain something, I crave finding the most accurate and efficient way of doing so. I'm not entirely sure why.. I think it's because the power of words. It's like what's said in one of my favorite movies: "Words offer the means to meaning and to those who will listen the enunciation of truth." Words have changed more about the world than any other human invention. Though, I've read a theory that humankind ceased its nomadic lifestyle so they could grow fields to make beer or wine or something. .. so.. maybe the correct answer is actually beer..? The point is, I'm fascinated by the power of words. It's just so strange to me. A couple of jumbled auditory sounds made in a certain order or specific scratches on a piece of paper or black pixels organized a certain way can give such exact meaning that we somehow make sense of. With the exact combination of words, I could achieve literally anything that is possible. If a genie was speaking the correct combination in my ear, they could guide me to being the most successful man in the world, if only I knew those words.

When I was probably 10 or 11 I had a nerdy thought that grew over the years into a bigger question. I was playing some video game on the NES or SNES or something and I couldn't beat a certain part (now that I think about it, I think it was Punch Out). The thought was that there were combinations of inputs I could put into the controller at certain times that would beat whatever I was facing in the game. There were also several million that would cause me to fail. Probably trillions (when you think about pressing buttons at millionths of a second differently). I figured someone could even train themselves to enter the inputs without looking at the screen. Maybe they never see the screen and are forced to try inputs randomly until they succeed. How many years would that take? Decades? Millennia? The video signal was a guide, but if you strip it down to the essentials, the combination was all you needed to know.

A few years later, I applied this question to words (words themselves a weird seemingly arbitrary combination of sounds). First probably with comedy. Fascinating in itself, humor is something that can't be properly described by science. Nevertheless, somewhere, there is a combination of words that would literally drive me insane from how funny I find them, and god I wish I could hear it. Trying to make my friends laugh was about finding the right combinations. Most of the trillions and trillions and infinite number of combinations of words make no sense at all. Relatively few have any meaning, and far less still I would consider funny. My quest for combinations started. What were they?

Then came music. The uncountable number of possible combinations of words became compounded by the added complications of instruments, beats, melodies, tempo, and the marrying of those things. The idea of music doesn't even make sense on paper. Why do humans enjoy sounds that are said in time and tones that compliment each other? What are keys anyway? Why do we like the exact audio frequencies that we do? It's strange and borderline silly, if you can remove yourself far enough away from it. There's no reason that we should love music, but we do. In the words of one of my favorite authors, "Anyone can love a thing because. That’s as easy as putting a penny in your pocket. But to love something despite. ... That is rare and pure and perfect." For that matter, why is he one of my favorite authors? Because his combinations are rad. :p

When I first started writing music I had things to say. I had questions to ask. I had been feeling like I was entering a forest to get to my 'life' on the other side, but I haven't yet left that place. I lost the path and no longer know whether I should seek it and continue on, look for an exit to the forest from the way I came, or just say fuck it and build a cottage inside. I got better about properly enunciating meanings with better combinations of more accurate words. But I was naive. I had no answers. More importantly, I hadn't found the right questions, and those are what I feel I still need today. I'm just looking for truth, and for that, I need to find the right combination of words. Since I'm already quoting Pat, might as well again: “It's the questions we can't answer that teach us the most. They teach us how to think. If you give a man an answer, all he gains is a little fact. But give him a question and he'll look for his own answers.”

So what's the question? What's the combination?

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