Harmonic Entanglement

As Monty Python used to say - Now for something completely different: 

Harmonic Entanglement

The known world can be a little boring, and occasionally depressing. So I often find a pleasing respite in indulging in the playground of the unknown.  Back a few posts ago I mused,"While finally drifting off to sleep to the early morning twitters of the birds in the trees beyond my window, a thought came to me: "panphonism" - the notion that maybe everything really is made of music, and maybe someday we will figure out how to listen to it."

Let's pretend we had done that - that we could listen to the vibrations of the strings. That we could hear the music that those vibrations produced. Which lets me stretch my notion of "chord theory" even further than I did in my 2009 book, The God Chord - String Theory in the Landscape of the Heart. Let's pretend that we can that we can "hear" everything. Not just people, but everything critters, bugs, even entities that we consider "insensate" - dumb, things rocks, boards, silverware, paintings, sculpture, everything, because remember everything is made of strings, so everything produces vibrations, that we can now hear.

OK, that is a touch weird - but here in the playground of the unknown we can play with that assumption. So here is what I have fun thinking about. Those weird connections - not just to people we love, but to paintings we love, sculpture we love, forest paths we love, puppies we love, sweatshirts we love - all those connections we now - in the playground of the unknown - realize are the result of harmonic entanglement.

Now we understand, in the playground of the unknown, that harmonic entanglement is different than the entanglement of quantum mechanics back in the playground of the known - that bizarre phenomenon that Einstein called "spooky action at a distance" where two quantum particles were linked so that no matter how distant from each other in the universe , if you knew the condition of one particle you could instantly infer the condition of the other. Piffle - easy peasy compared to the wonders of harmonic entanglement.

In harmonic entanglement any two entities might share string vibrations that result in strong sympathetic ties between the two entities. Another way to think of this is that the two different entities's billions and billions of strings vibrate at rate that create similar chords, which are in harmony with each other. This, now obvious, relationship sheds light on some previously inexplicable phenomena:

The Some Enchanted Evening Phenomenon. This is the "love at first sight" phenomenon that occurs when two highly harmonic entities come in contact for the first time and instantly become "entangled." We tend to think of this with a humanist bias - two human entities meeting. But the phenomenon can have wider applications Picture yourself shopping for a puppy. You go to a pet store, a breeder's facility, an animal shelter where you find a plethora of puppies all wiggling and whimpering, "pickmepickmepickme!" But you see a little one, sort of at the back, just looking at you. Tail slowly wagging and "Bam! Some Enchanted Evening!" "I'll take that one!" The Some Enchanted Evening Phenomenon can also be triggered by just about any entities that share harmonic chords - people, puppies, pictures, books, whatever.

It can even impact with a place. A number of years ago we hired a young assistant professor from a school out on the West coast. She later asserted that upon arriving in her new east coast home, " I just immediately felt at home, that this is where I was meant to be." Apparently harmonically entangled - as she eventually married, had a family, and swiftly climbed the academic ladder. Seemingly still entangled.

The Getting to Know You Phenomenon. By sticking to Rogers and Hammerstein's works, but jumping from South Pacific to The King and I, we discover this phenomenon. In the end the result is still entangled harmony, but it takes a little longer to recognize the harmonic chords. Thinking about this type of entanglement always takes me back to the TV series Frazier, and an episode about Frazier's father Martin's chair. It is a piece of furniture in significant contrast to Frazier's high end furniture which includes an exact replica of Peggy Guggenheim's Paris sofa and many objets d'art. But when Frazier accidentally throws the chair off the balcony and suggests a high end replacement Martin explains why that chair is the only one he every really wanted. He says:

"Okay, I'll tell you what chair I want. I want the chair I was sitting in when I watched Neil Armstrong take his first step on the Moon. And when the US hockey team beat the Russians in the '80 Olympics. I want the chair I was sitting in the night you called me to tell me I had a grandson. I want the chair I was in all those nights, when your mother used to wake me up with a kiss after I'd fallen asleep in front of the television. Y'know I still fall asleep in it. And every once in a while, when I wake up, I still expect your mother to be there, ready to lead me off to bed..."  

Martin and his chair had become - over the years, and through shared experiences - harmonically entangled. Think about it. You probably have some thing that you have hung onto over the years. A sweatshirt, a poster or picture of some person, place or thing, maybe a stuffed animal, a childhood book - anything that perhaps started out as just a "thing" but one with which you have - over the years - now become harmonically entangled."

This is all very plausible here in the playground of the unknown, but unfortunately seems more than a little strange out there where the real kids run around in their playground, texting their friends, posting pix Facebook, TikToking away. All activities that seemed more than a little strange before there were smart phones which now, occasionally, provide tantalizing glimpses of a future in the playground of the unknown.