I was on my way to Iowa yesterday afternoon, about 152 miles from Omaha on I-80, when I had a sonic experience. At the time I was fretting that the Nebraskan landscape had not inspired me to any insights that I could distill into a blog entry. Even the music of Bob Dylan (Greatest Hits Volumes I and II) had not produced anything but idle daydreams and threadbare memories. But as I drove along in my Mazda rental car, I became aware that the sound from the road surface was fluctuating between different notes. The sound was so easy to distinguish, much like the pounding bass notes from a cranked up stereo in a nearby car, that I even looked over my shoulder to see if another car was next to me.
With growing curiosity and delight, I listened more intently and identified the notes of the old Church Dorian scale (the piano's white notes starting from D). The notes were distinct and on pitch. There was no smearing or chromaticism in moving from note to note. Most of the notes were leisurely whole notes or longer, but there were frequent instances of relatively rapid passages up and down scale.
I did not understand how the road vibration could change pitch like this. The road surface appeared uniform. The terrain was flat and the cruise control kept my speed at a constant 80 miles per hour. The song - for a song was what my mind perceived in the shifting patterns of the notes - continued until the moment that the highway surface changed to smooth asphalt.
Medieval writers associated the Church Dorian mode with serenity, balance of mind, and self-control. Plato considered this modal scale to be conducive to a cheerful and pious attitude.
I was pleased to have such an encouraging overture to my Iowa vacation.
