“[To Adorno,] only avant-garde art and music may preserve the truth by capturing the reality of human suffering.”
-Wikipedia, Frankfurt School
The synthesizer's keys were no kinder to Vinyl Scratch than Octavia. As her hooves sloppily worked the ebony and ivory, the confused jumble of sounds jagged on her ears. No doubt her roommate would have said there was no difference between the musical mess she was making and dubstep, but Vinyl dismissed the imagined slight with a snort. It took skill to craft something so artfully dissonant. But the skill had deserted her now, and every melody or rhythm she attempted to conjure seemed so off, so amateurish, so fundamentally wrong it was just as much of a slap in the face as Octavia slamming her bedroom door in Vinyl's face when she'd tried to apologize again, right after they'd got back.
Maybe I deserve this, Vinyl thought, finishing off her fifth bottle of cider. Is this my punishment?
No! I—I didn't do anything wrong. Well, I broke my promise, but what happened at the Veldvet Club, I needed that. I did. It....helped me. I think.
She fiddled around with a bassline she'd been working on and managed to keep it going for two measures before her hoof slipped. She yelled and slammed her forelegs down on the keyboard repeatedly, but the blessed relief through violence didn't come; instead, it just added to her frustration. She threw her empty cider bottle at the wall. The glass burst into pieces, but that didn't help her either. Hunched over the keyboard and breathing heavily, she thought, I'm my own worst enemy.
She shook her head. It's not my fault! It's the Song. If—if it hadn't vanished into thin air, then I could listen to it and I wouldn't be feeling like this.
Vinyl pushed herself away from the keyboard and went to her phonograph. She slipped a record onto the turntable and magicked the needle atop it. Dubstep burst out of the speaker, and Vinyl cranked the volume to the max. She didn't care about Octavia's sleep, she decided. The snooty little aristocrat could rot, for all she cared. Vinyl convinced herself it was Octavia's fault she couldn't accept a simple apology.
As the wubs shattered the silent night, Vinyl thrashed in time to the stabbing, juddering mid-range bass beat. It was such a tortured sound that it kindled a kinship with the ache in her soul. She had heard that misery loves company, so the same must be true of anger. As she tried to lose herself in the tortured soundscape, she silently willed Octavia to barge in and tell her to turn the music down. Vinyl was looking forward to sharing a few choice words with her roommate. But Octavia stayed shut up in her room. Eventually Vinyl's legs couldn't support her anymore, so she collapsed into bed and slipped away into a heavy sleep.
As the guardian of the labyrinth, still wearing Vinyl Scratch's face, lumbered out of the darkness, Vinyl herself turned tail and fled. Faint glimmers of light reflected off the stone walls, growing stronger the further she ran, but at the same time the colt's plaintive cries for help grew ever more distant. Somewhere in the maze was a weapon Vinyl could wield to fend off the guardian, if only she could find it. But she didn't have a moment's rest to search; no matter how fast she galloped down the corridors, the guardian's steady, measured pace somehow kept her right at Vinyl's tail.
Vinyl rounded a corner, only to run smack into a dead end. Her heart leapt into her throat as she twisted around and glimpsed the guardian lurching from out of the shadows towards her; the darkness seemed to follow in the guardian's wake.
“You think you can run from me?” the dark mare asked.
Vinyl Scratch looked around wildly for a way out, and her eyes chanced upon a door flush with the wall she'd missed. It was the same color as the stone and had some kind of circular emblem carved onto it. She dived for the handle and pushed it down just as the guardian reached out to grab Vinyl. Once she bursh through the door, she powered into it and slammed it shut before the guardian could dart through.
A podium stood in the center of the room, glowing against the darkness. Resting on a velvet cushion atop it were the Elements of Harmony, in the form of a single tiara with five gems and a sixth empty space over the center gem. My sword and shield, she thought, with which I fight the darkness. She couldn't quite say why those popped into her head, they seemed to fit the situation perfectly, as sure as a key fits into its matched lock. She rushed to the alighted podium, took the tiara, and placed it upon her brow just as the guardian and her darkness burst into the room. Vinyl felt courage and bravery and the sheer, indescribable power of laughter course through her.
“You wanna dance?” Vinyl asked, twirling to face her doppelganger. “Then let's go, but when I whoop ya, try not to slip on all your blood on the dance floor.”
She nimbly skirted around the guardian, getting into the fleet-hooved groove of combat like a boxer. The fantastic and otherworldly light of the Elements representing the harmony and the balance of the world was with her and in her, driving her actions with an almost unearthly and unerring power.
The scowling guardian merely revolved slowly in place as Vinyl circled her.
Grinning, Vinyl tapped into the spark of light inside her body and let the magic of the Elements and the universe itself flow through her. A rainbow of light exploded from her tiara and powered across the room. She braced herself by digging her hooves into the stone floor, which just barely stopped her from being blown backwards by the force. The rainbow consumed the guardian and the darkness both until not a single iota of the room was not of the light. It filled every corner until it was all that was, like peering through a gap in the world and into a realm wholly made of light. Then, little by little, it started to fade, not because it was exhausted, but simply because it wore on her. She couldn't keep such power streaming through her forever. Bit by bit the glow ebbed until the room became distinct again--
The guardian, completely and totally unharmed, powered forward and knocked Vinyl to the ground. Leering, she knelt down and wrapped her forelegs around Vinyl's neck. She sneered, “How could such an unbalanced little unicorn like you even think you could use the forces of balance against me? What a foal!”
Vinyl gasped for air in the dark labyrinth, but it was no use. Her knees gave out and she was sinking down, down, down....
Vinyl Scratch fell out of bed, nursing a splitting migraine. She sat on the floor as the world spun around her and the walls wobbled in and out of focus. She slitted her eyes against the sunlight pouring through the window until she made out the hands on the clock, which pointed to a quarter to nine.
Man, there's too much light, she thought. What's a mare gotta do to get the powers that be to cut back on it?
She racked and flayed her brain until it spat out under duress her itinerary for the day, though it protested loudly at the pure torture of being forced to think. She didn't have any gigs that she could remember. So, for lack of anything better to do, she sat heavily in front of her keyboard and magicked it to life. Staring at the keys, she stretched until her shoulder blades cracked while she brooded on the itching emotion brewing in her mind that she wanted to pour out into her music. She worked her hooves over the keys while singing atop the meaty chords and smooth chord progression:
“Too much light, gotta get away--”
She stopped. The sound was so mainstream it hurt, though the hangover probably had something to do with that. She stared at the keys again, her thoughts twisting and turning as they charted the course of her next musical voyage. All she could settle on was that there were rough seas ahead. After a few minutes' thought, she settled on a lurching, lumbering tempo with fits of frantic and frenzied fills. It was so hard and heavy and brutal, she couldn't help but love it--
As the fog of sleep lifted, an image from her dreams flitted into her mind, an image of her battling with herself. It was the same thing she'd dreamed on the train home. That image froze her hooves over the keys, though she couldn't say why.
What does it mean? she thought, shaking. And does it have something to do with why I lost control of myself last night? She suddenly remembered Twilight Sparkle and Rarity talking about dreams at the Apple gig a few days ago. What was that book called? Sparkle will probably have it at the Golden Oaks Library, I bet.
She turned off the keyboard, a little more frightened of it than she had been, and left her room. When she walked into the kitchen Octavia pointedly walked out, leaving her half-eaten lunch on the table. Vinyl helped herself to it while brewing some coffee, then sat at the table and stared at the wall. Her thoughts went to the Song she couldn't remember, and the morning seemed a little grayer and less vibrant. As she'd thought a million times before, she wondered why the mind that had once created it hadn't even come close to conjuring it again. Just a simple string of notes, yet they unlocked the key to filling the world with joy--
Again, that image of Vinyl fighting with herself broke into her head. Did her dreams have something to do with it?
She promised herself she would find out.
“Hi!” the smiling Twilight Sparkle said as she looked up from a scroll on the table. “Can I help you find something?”
“Naw, I'm good,” Vinyl replied, waving a hoof as she shied past her. “I wanted to check out the books on music, uh....-ology.”
“Why, certainly. Right this way.” The purple unicorn led her to a shelf and gestured with a flourish.
“Awesome. Thanks.”
Vinyl nodded to let Twilight know she was good to go, but the purple unicorn stayed put and smiled, ready to be of service. Vinyl gave a half-hearted smile in return and walked close to the shelf. Her eyes went over the spines, but she didn't pay any attention to them; all she felt was the librarian's eyes on the back of her head.
“Uh, busy day?” Vinyl asked off-hoofedly as she magically pulled a book out and pretended to look at the cover.
“Oh, I wish. It's been so slow I decided to work on some mathematics, and now I can't figure out these chords.”
Vinyl paused. “What?”
“A chord. It's a straight line that connects two points on a circle's circumference.”
“Oh. I thought you meant, like, a music chord.”
Twilight shrugged. “Music is based on math. If you know the right equations, you can make any kind of music you want.” She magicked a book, The O.J. Chorale and Other Masterpieces, from the shelf and made it hover in front of Vinyl. “Black Baytoven was deaf, yet he could still write some of the most beautiful music because he knew the math behind the notes.” She turned to the shelf and rummaged through it. “Let's see what else we've got here that might help you....”
Vinyl took the opportunity to glance at Twilight's scroll on the table, which was scrawled with complicated-looking math equations. No wonder she's so eager to help, Vinyl thought. I'd want to get away from this stuff too. She saw a diagram of interlocking circles that looked like planets, and had these 'chords' things connecting different points on the circumferences. One circle caught Vinyl's eye. Something about it seemed so familiar. It had a line going straight down the middle, and the two end points at the top and bottom were connected by three chords in a 'Z'-shape, filling the circle. She frowned, trying to remember where she'd seen the symbol before. Then her eyes fell on a battered, well-hoofed little black book lying next to the scroll. Mare and Her Symbols, by Doctor Pieasov Mind.
That's it, she thought.
She turned back to Twilight Sparkle, who was finishing up her scouring of the bookshelves. “I think that should just about do it,” the purple pony said, magically levitating a a stack of books taller than Vinyl was. “Anything else I can help you find?”
“Uh, yeah. Lately I've been feeling my beats are kinda lacking. Do you have anything I can get some mad awesome ideas from? I dunno, a book about dreams and, uh....symbolicalism? I heard....from a friend....about this trippy book called Mare and Her Symbols.”
The other unicorn's eyes flitted to the book on the table, then back to Vinyl Scratch's face. “Well, I, uh....of course.” She walked to the table, sighed wistfully, and levitated Mare and Her Symbols atop the pile. “Anything else?” she asked, struggling to hide her disappointment.
Vinyl shouldered the burden of lifting the books. Gritting her teeth with the effort, she said, “Naw, man, I'm good.”
“Right, then let me check these out and you'll be good to go.”
I hope so, Vinyl Scratch thought.
'During our evolution, our higher brain functions were built atop earlier, more primitive mental structures. These structures are the source of instinct. When we are frightened, we feel the urge to flee or, if circumstances demand it, fight. These urges happen without happening. They are hardwired into our minds and bodies, an automatic process akin to breathing. We can only attempt to hold the reins. We are riders, traveling in bodies with eons of evolution guiding them, and these gleaming cities we have constructed for ourselves are strange and alien to them.
'Yet despite that some ponies have adapted to the social alienation they represent marvelously. Canterlot high society, for one, who fancy themselves more advanced than any other form of life. As a former part of those circles myself, so did I. Yet when I traveled the most rural and remote parts of the world I most certainly did not see anypony paying to be psychoanalyzed for neuroses and petty inferiority complexes. In my naivete, I left to study the 'primitive' mind and ended up discovering only the startling lack of my own knowledge about myself.
'Before the advent of money and social structures, we equines evolved in voluntary, cooperative herds guided by a principle of mutual aid against a world in which we were prey. Our deepest unconscious instincts demand this state of free social confluence. Yet after we tamed and gentrified this world, the instincts that once generated our solidarity have gone awry. In the absence of predatory animals, some ponies misidentify their fellow equines as predators attempting to destroy their livelihood to justify their unconscious fear. These ersatz herds, such as the Canterlot elite, become isolated and insular, shutting themselves off from the richness of the pony experience even as they are convinced of their own superiority, causing a fundamental schism in both our society and ourselves.
'Civilization, it seems, is both our blessing and our curse, a testament to our technical ingenuity and a wasteland of stifling social structures. But what is to be done about this devastating modern condition? The answer is that we must recognize these unconscious impulses. Drag them into the light of our conscious observation and dissect how they guide us wrong, so that we may overcome them and safely and rationally find an outlet for them. We mustn't abolish our cities, but the mindset of our cities. In Canterlot we must recreate the world at large: a place of anarchic passion, free expression, and natural harmony.
'But what will guide us out of the wasteland? We must turn to the archetypes, the motifs and symbols that recur time and again in our fantasies and arts and dreams, even in civilizations far removed. They are the psychic counterparts of instinct. Unchanging and eternal, they speak without speaking. They unconsciously communicate with the spark of light within us and lead the way for its wholeness and integration with the herd of ponykind. They are our lodestars, our guides in our journey, and it is our shared heritage as equines from whence these primordial symbols come.
'I, in Equestria, and a zebra on the savanna may be worlds removed, yet when we independently look at a circle we both compare it to the archetype of a circle we mentally share: an umblemished, unbroken, perfect, self-complete arc. We both see a representation of wholeness. More complex kinds of archetypes reveal themselves in our life experiences, signifying mental constructs that govern how ponies interpret and order events. As we mature, experiences accrue until we realize we are on a kind of personal voyage to discover who we are, to gain not only our cutie marks but the identity they symbolize. We long for this completeness of identity. We create our own personal stories, populated by wise old men and tricksters and villains, all the while mythologizing our struggle to return to our fundamental nature, our state of natural wholeness and harmony. In their own eyes, everypony is the hero of their own myth.'
Vinyl Scratch sat up and reread that last sentence more carefully. 'Everypony is the hero of their own myth,' she thought. So what's my myth about?
She put the book down and stretched. 'An enlightening journey into the mind of the modern pony,' a book review quoted on the back cover declared, 'drawing inspiration from ancient myths, the pioneers of the Varnetian Academy, and modern scientific understanding. Doctor Mind writes with a refreshingly straightforward voice to help non-professionals understand his life's work.' It was true. She was no professional, yet she'd lain on her bed reading it for two hours straight, hoping it would trigger some magic insight about her troubling dreams. But despite what the blurb said, some of the wording was still hard to wrap her mind around. For the moment, she needed a break.
It was around noon, so she went to the front door to check the mailbox. She levitated the bundle of letters inside and spread them out on the kitchen table. While rummaging through them, to her surprise she found a letter addressed to her from Hoofbeats. Opening it up, she read:
'Dear Miss Scratch, we are writing to inform you that there has been a last minute cancellation in our annual Best Young DJ competition line-up. We're pleased to say we now have an opening. Since your application was the last one taken off the shortlist, you have been bumped up to a finalist. We're aware this is very short notice, but the slot is yours if you want it. Don't bother replying, as we won't receive your response in time. Just show up at the club and present this letter. Hope to see you there, Management.'
What the....? Vinyl turned the letter over, then checked in the envelope, looking for something that would explain. Suddenly, she thought, Octavia.
She headed down the hallway and pushed open the door to Octavia's room, where the gray mare was practicing her cello. She didn't shout, or scowl, or even deign to notice Vinyl Scratch, not until the DJ magicked the letter in front of Octavia's face and waved it around furiously.
“What's all this about?” Vinyl asked.
The cellist kept playing while she calmly but acidly said, “Oh, sorry I didn't tell you sooner. I must have lost track of time.”
Vinyl Scratch scowled as her blood pressure ratcheted up.
Condescendingly, Octavia explained, “When I last went to Manehattan, to see about getting an audition with a string quartet represented by Oceanic Musique, I saw a flyer and I signed you up. As a favor.”
“You didn't tell me anything about that.”
Octavia spat, “I didn't want you to be disappointed if you didn't make the cut. I didn't expect them to get back to you this late.”
Vinyl Scratch was torn in half: one part of her felt bad about repaying Octavia's kindness with missing her recital; the other side was pissed Octavia hadn't told her anything.
Her angry side won.
“You know what this means? The competition is tomorrow night, and I don't have anything good enough for that place. So now I have one night to come up with a worthy song!”
Octavia's cello bow scratched the strings. She parted them and asked, “Tomorrow?”
“Yeah,” Vinyl snapped. “What's it to you?”
“Oceanic called me back for an audition. It's also tomorrow night. In Manehattan.”
'Sometimes it seems two lives rhyme,' Vinyl recalled in a moment of stunned apprehension, though she took pains to keep her face an icy mask. 'A chance meeting under a falling star, or two identical thoughts divided by distances far.'
“....are you going?” Vinyl asked finally.
“Of course I'm going,” Octavia snapped. “I haven't had a steady job in months." With a sneer, she added, "I'm just lucky they called me back before they heard about my disastrous recital." The one you ruined, her tone implied should be affixed to the end of the sentence. "Oh, they'll probably be expecting me to make an absolute mess of things the moment I walk on stage. What am I going to do? How can I ever impress them now?"
“Have you tried playing music from this century?” Vinyl sniped.
Snout raised high, Octavia ignored the jab and collected herself with a steadying breath. “And that's leaving aside the question of how to get there. I barely have enough money for train tickets. And there isn't a return train until the next day. I haven't a clue how I'm going to pay for a hotel room.”
Vinyl grumbled. She may have been angry with Octavia, but she wasn't angry enough to sabotage her roommate's chances at landing a gig. Not yet, anyway. “We could share one,” she said, injecting her voice with what she hoped was the appropriate amount of distaste. “If you want.”
Octavia kept her snout in the air. “....it would be for the best, I suppose.”
Vinyl said, “Well, as long as that's settled....”
She turned on her hoof, blew through the door, and let it swing shut behind her. As soon as she was out in the hallway, she heard the scratch of strings through the wall as Octavia took up her cello again and bowed a few notes. Then it ended as abruptly as it had started, dissolving into a frustrated gnash of strings. Vinyl Scratch, her stomach twisting, walked away.
Flaming daggers prickled Vinyl's eyes, but she leaned over the synthesizer regardless and plodded onwards. She had long ago crossed the frontier into an unknown soundscape, and struggled to find her way back without a map. Here a hill, there a vale, and everywhere the discarded fragments of sheet music she'd torn up, all for the crime of being unworthy of one of Equestria's premiere nightclubs and the home of dubstep on the east coast.
And tomorrow she had to play there. It made her want to cry.
The hours whiled away towards sunrise as the mountain of shredded sheet music grew taller. Nothing sounded right, nothing. She tried her hardest to capture the raw power of dubstep, the mash-up of slow and fast and the brutal, unstoppable mid-range beat. But no matter what she came up with, it wasn't hard enough, it wasn't dangerous enough, and it wasn't....wasn't underground enough. It was too slick and smooth and mainstream. They'd laugh her out of Hoofbeats if she tried that.
And for some reason, whenever she listened to her current composition, what came to her mind was the circular chord diagram she'd seen in Twilight Sparkle's library. She doodled it on the sheet, but no matter how hard she stared at it and ransacked her brains she couldn't remember where she'd seen it before.
A rooster took to crowing by the time she'd come up with something halfway workable and hastily scribbled the first title that came to mind and sounded halfway fitting for the song's serpentine sound. The sheet music in front of her was etched with so many corrections, alterations, and revisions it resembled a battered, age-worn treasure map, but it was a start.
She only hoped there would be some gold at the finish.