Musings on the Theme from 'Patton'

Posted on Sat 19th Oct, 2024 @ 5:46pm by Lieutenant JG Kellian Michaels
Edited on Sat 19th Oct, 2024 @ 5:47pm

420 words; about a 2 minute read

This evening, when I got home from work, I made supper and decided to watch an old Earth movie called Patton. It's about a United States Army general named George Patton, who was known for being rather flamboyant, exhilarated by combat, and intolerant of what he perceived as weakness in others. Most interestingly to me, he remembered past lives in which he had served in historical military forces. He could stand on a historical battlefield and describe exactly some battle he had fought in because he was seeing it as he remembered it happening. I suspect people at the time thought he was cracked, but if near-death experiences are to be believed--and I think they are--Patton was one of the few people who retain conscious memory of past lives.

The Egyptologist Dorothy Eady is another such person, who had past life memories of serving as a priestess in an Egyptian temple. Her memories were so vivid that she was able to accurately describe and map out the temple complex in which she had served millennia before and to point out where archaeologists should dig to find the temple's garden. She also, if I remember correctly, learned Egyptian hieroglyphics with minimal teaching and then by remembering the rest.

All of this is fascinating to me, but it isn't actually why I'm writing this log entry. I'm writing tonight because I had a weird realization about the theme music to Patton. The opening is a cheerful, jaunty march that sounds almost playful. You can whistle it. It's a fun tune to whistle.

And I realized that a Vulcan could never in a million years compose it except perhaps as an exercise in imitating Earth music--but it wouldn't really sound the same. It would be like me trying to play that march on the cello--close, but no cigar, as Dad would say.

It's not that Vulcans are incapable of putting emotion in their music--I've played their music, and there's plenty of emotion in it. It's a more analytical kind of emotion, though, as if Vulcan composers are studying their own emotions or the emotions of historical people even as they compose them into their music and/or perform it. At least, that's the impression I sometimes get. Other times, though, when playing the compositions of a Vulcan musical genius, like the harpsichordist Salet, yes, the true, deep emotion comes through. Some of Salet's works almost make me cry.

And on that happy (?) note, I think it's time for bed!

 

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