I’ve been listening to this song all morning on repeat, and it has not yet lost any of it’s creepiness.  It is the Swine flu gene, somehow mapped out so that all the little oogies and whatsits that make up it’s very DNA are assigned a musical note, and this is the result.  (Get more info at his blog).

I interpret this to mean that the music you are hearing is inside the Swine flu.  Each note that you hear is an integral part of it, just made into sound.  Granted, the composer could have used any sound to represent it, so there could be many versions of this that all sound widely different, but this is just as relevant as any other.  It is amazing to me that something so oddly beautiful could come from a deadly virus.

I keep thinking that if the Swine flu really is the next “plague,” this would kind of be the Song of the Apocalypse, gently playing in the background, orchestrating millions of deaths.

Update:  The more I think about this, the more I think what is creeping me out the most is that a human did not write this music.  All the composer did was assign an instrument to the notes, but the notes were already there.  Who, or what, wrote them?–and if they’re there, they’re in everything.  Heavy.

I am endlessly fascinated by things like this, or when music becomes so… physical.  There are other examples, all of which have blown my mind equally.

The first is an Alien book, called Music of the Spears.  In it, a twisted composer wants to harness the sounds of a screaming alien to compose a “Symphony of Hate.”  As you can imagine, with an Alien involved, death, chaos, and all around weirdness ensue.

The next is another book, a 6-issue arc in the “Umbrella Academy” series called “The Apocalypse Suite,” where the main villain–The Conductor–wants to compose a symphony that when played in the right key would unravel the fabric of reality in much the same way as a high pitched noise can unravel, or break, glass.

Lastly would be Battlestar Galactica, of course, when the music that has been in our characters heads for the past two seasons comes to a climax when Starbuck’s attempt at decoding it results in giving her the coordinates to jump the ship to the fabled Earth.  (Even if you are not a BSG fan, check this out):

A coincidence here is that the next part of the ongoing story I’m posting will have a lot to do with this concept.  If you read it you might think it was inspired by this post but it’s actually the other way around.  The reason it’s taking so long for me to write between segments is that I’m finding writing stuff like this is extremely difficult to do well, and you kind of have to know a bit about music in order to put it into language, which I am still learning about.