* * * * *
After all, when you remember what number is, what's happening follows
naturally. Number's a language we use to blaze our way through the
wood of reality. Without number we couldn't say what is more or less
probable, we couldn't signpost our path. But using number is like
trying to detect the emission of a photon without having to receive
that photon. The difficulty lies in trying to get number at least
one remove from the font of all language--the human mind. Possibly
we'll come closest to order, be at one with reality, when we can order
number--at the level of statistical probability--to be truly random, at
one with chaos.
At any rate, there you have it. I'd like to go into greater detail but
I'm afraid to.
Before my phone numbers up and atted 'em I was content merely to tune
out the noisome and the fulsome and sigh to myself, "That's life. You
ask for beer and get water."
That is, I thought I was content.
It's only now that I'm getting beer with an egg in it that I realize
how passionately I hated the way things were and how passionately I'd
hate to have to go back to that way.
I don't know how long this phenomenon will go on but while it lasts I
mean to make the most of it.
I unashamedly enjoy watching the expression of bewildered enthusiasm on
everyone's face. That expression is there because everyone listens to
and looks at what the polls tell him is popular and because everyone
tells himself he likes it because "everyone" likes it.
But in some respects my feelings are more uncertain. I'm glad and
at the same time sorry for the longhair musicians. It seems more
embarrassing than pleasing to them to find themselves suddenly the
idols of bobby-soxers. I try not to think of Stravinsky barricading
himself against the adulating adolescents souveniring him to his
underwear.
As you can see, I've had to harden my heart. (It's tempting to say I've
had to become number.) And I intend to be even more ruthless.
I'm planning, for example, to place on the Hit Parade Dhaly's _Concerto
in Alpha Wave for Oscillograph and Woodwinds_.
That's why I'm being exceedingly careful to leave nothing to chance.
Though this document is sort of a hostage to fortune, I'm taking into
account the possibility that I might lose it while commuting and that
it might fall into the hands of some unsympathetic contemporary. So I'm
not writing down my phone numbers or my name. I want to keep the lines
clear for the pollsters.