Sime~Gen Inc. Presents

ReReadable Books

(April 2007)

"The Soul-Time Hypothesis: The Music Of The Spheres"

By

Jacqueline Lichtenberg

In the January 2007 column, I alerted you to a tiny book on Screenwriting by Blake Snyder, Save The Cat! It raises a massive question when it presents a detailed "Beat Sheet" – namely: why is it called a "beat" sheet?

The obvious answer is not the only answer.

When we think of the music of the spheres, we think of tone and pitch, of notes. But the essence of all music in all cultures throughout time is rhythm.

Indeed, students of Astrology learn early and often of the periodicity of the planets, each unique orbit combining with others to describe life’s shape.

Our sun orbits the massive black hole at the center of our galaxy, and our galaxy moves through space. So no two moments in TIME are the same. Each moment is unique. A soul positioned within Time and Space absorbs the Experience of that unique point. One chance. That’s it.

Nevertheless, human experience of time and life reveals a repetitive periodicity, a rhythm of life. Like all music, the music of the spheres, of the planets, is music because of the rhythm, of measure and tempo. Without rhythm, notes would be only noise.

No two musician’s performances of a piece are identical. A musician creates the music anew with each performance. A writer of music creates new pieces that are unique, yet based in rules that govern rhythm, tonality and pitch, so that the new, unique piece just created is exactly like a myriad pieces written by others – but new and unique.

New screenwriters are often driven bonkers by Hollywood’s demand, "give me something new, original, unique that is just exactly like this recently successful piece."

They’re asking for exactly what the music writer does. Or the poet, dancer or graphic artist. Or the videogame writer. You can find it in every artform we’ve previously discussed in this column. See 1994 posted on simegen.com.

Hollywood, or Manhattan publishing, wants a waltz or a fox trot, or a mambo; maybe tangos are selling hot this year. But they want it in an unusual key, or with odd instruments, or maybe an ancient Scottish scale.

Rhythm produces an irresistible, primal response in the human nervous system, perhaps because the Soul enters manifest reality through Time, or because each moment is unique but connected to other moments in one or another of the standard patterns underlying creation.

Save the Cat! explains some of these currently popular standard patterns in the film industry. Each has its counterpart in novels and other fiction forms.

These are not patterns invented by Hollywood and forced on audiences. They are primal patterns that the audience Group Mind forces on Hollywood because people won’t pay to see it if it isn’t built on a primal but invisible pattern.

Artists have worked out the defining rhythms of these patterns, just as Joseph Campbell worked out the Hero’s Journey. They didn’t invent it, and neither did audiences – they discovered an element basic to the structure of the universe and the relationship of the human soul to that universe. Rhythm. The music of the spheres.

Blake Snyder, in Save The Cat! has begun the process of identifying and articulating a technology that might one day be called Applied Primality. And the basis of Applied Primality is the Beat Sheet.

Almost all films, TV series, and made-for-TV movies, adhere to one or another of these rhythm structures, or beat sheets, that other writing teachers have identified. Snyder has articulated the most popular structure, that forms the rhythm under the music of the our Group Mind today.

I vividly recall a profound Sesame Street segment about the "Rhythm of the World" where a Calypso band marches on a beach to the beat of the waves.

We respond to the underlying rhythm of the Screenplay because it delivers something unique within the framework of something familiar. Snyder’s Beat Sheet provides a familiar framework with a "beat" – exactly 110 pages, exactly 40 major events – that uses TIME to connect SOUL into manifestation – to affirm life itself.

And in that connection of soul to life lies the secret of connecting the soul to the Eternal.

This "beat sheet" easily forges that connection for members of our biggest Group Mind which makes this particular beat primal in and of itself. Snyder points out 10 primal story-patterns that are native to his beat sheet.

The same process of interactive discovery of the underlying beat of "the novel" form dominates publishing today. Novel form is being changed by the gaming industry! I have four examples here that the student of magic should study in conjunction with Snyder’s book, both for the way they are structured and the primal story material.

Dawn Cook’s ACE paperback fantasy series, The Decoy Princess and Princess At Sea is about a world where certain individuals who have access to a poison made by a magical creature make a game of manipulating inter-Kingdom politics. Each "player" takes a Kingdom and tries to out-do the other "players" with tricks, subterfuge, and warfare. A trainee player is a woman raised as heir to a throne, who discovers she’s a stand-in protecting the real princess.

Searingly romantic material drive these two books, which would make them primal if they didn’t have anything else. But these books ask profound questions about the reality of our world, about power, and free will.

In another fantasy world, Moira J. Moore writes a blatant romance published as an ACE fantasy. In a world where "incursions" from another reality disrupt things, pairs of men and women called Source and Shield, must defend the peace of innocent civilians.

A dubious procedure matches these pairs of military magicians. Dunleavy Mallorough is a woman with a definite opinion about which Source she wants to bind herself to for life as his Shield. The fellow she gets instead clashes with her personality and sparks (of all sorts) fly. Can they work together enough to protect their cities and solve the mystery of the vicious incursions mowing down Sources and Sheilds?

Webmage by Kelly McCullough is a fascinating science-fantasy mixture. Here is a universe where the ancient Fates create our reality as they play a giant computer game.

Here Magic requires poetry – cantrip, doggerel, Iambic Pentameter, – a rhythmic form is necessary behind the words in any language, just as a beat sheet is behind a film.

In our modern world, the hero, Ravirn, is a computer geek who knows he is literally a child of the Fates, and he knows how the universe is really run. He can program the Fates’ computer.

His Great Aunt Atropos, one of the three Fates, has decided to reprogram the main computer to eliminate human free will. Winning a game against her will take more magic, programming skill and political muscle than he commands.

Revirn, believing in Free Will, especially his own, sets out to secure the Fate’s computer against Fate’s tinkering, thus preserving Free Will.

The WebMage subtitle says, "Magic is about to get an upgrade" – and that brought to mind the Kabalistic principle that the source-code of this Universe got an upgrade at Mount Sinai when the Ten Commandments were handed down. The code changed in such a way that the actions of mere human beings obeying the Commandments could permanently affect the universe. Humans were given the responsibility to set the Calendar so the Commandments could be obeyed at the proper season – i.e. on the beat.

Remember, after this January’s column discussing The Art of Time and Soul, in February we explored Bending Time’s Arrow – going back and forth and across time in various fantasy novels. We discussed the Kabalistic principle that the Creator of the Universe gave human beings Free Will, and the implications of time travel for Soul Growth. This is a huge topic we’ll revisit.

Also remember the recent news releases indicating that larger, more complex objects have now been teleported by a matter transmitter – computerized of course. What does matter transmission imply about time travel?

Consider what we may discover when they get Hubble upgraded and we can peer farther back in time.

As noted above, gaming as it has emerged as an industry today, especially computer gaming, is built on these "beat sheets" – rhythm formulae that connect Soul into manifestation through Time to deliver a primal experience.

Find it in dance, ballet, symphony, even Prime Time News – images dancing to the Sesame Street beat. Primal.