The Glass Bead Game: Magister Ludi

Glasperlenspiel

 


from Wikipedia

The game

The Glass Bead Game is “a kind of synthesis of human learning”[9] in which themes, such as a musical phrase or a philosophical thought, are stated. As the Game progresses, associations between the themes become deeper and more varied.[9] Although the Glass Bead Game is described lucidly, the rules and mechanics are not explained in detail.[10]


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Consider, finally, the stereophany between these two elegant paragraphs, one written by the contemporary American poet and naturalist, Annie Dillard, and the other by her compatriot Haniel Long:

My friend Jens Jensen, who is an ornithologist, tells me that when he was a boy in Denmark he caught a big carp embedded in which, across the spinal vertebrae, were the talons of an osprey. Apparently years before, the fish hawk had dived for its prey, but had misjudged its size. The carp was too heavy for it to lift up out of the water, and so after a struggle the bird of prey was pulled under and drowned. The fish then lived as best it could with the great bird clamped to it, till time disintegrated the carcass, and freed it, all but the bony structure of the talon.
— Haniel Long, Letter to Saint Augustine

And once, says Ernest Seton Thompson — once, a man shot an eagle out of the sky. He examined the eagle and found the dry skull of a weasel fixed by the jaws to his throat. The supposition is that the eagle had pounced on the weasel and the weasel swiveled and bit as instinct taught him, tooth to neck, and nearly won. I would like to have seen that eagle from the air a few weeks or months before he was shot: was the whole weasel still attached to his feathered throat, a fur pendant? Or did the eagle eat what he could reach, gutting the living weasel with his talons before his breast, bending his beak, cleaning the beautiful airborne bones?
— Annie Dillard, Teaching a Stone to Talk


Reading this again recently, I was fortunate enough to find this link to Stunt Rock’s album: Regret™ Instruction Manual Issue Two: Letting Go Versus Holding On (standard http). The following transition and dialogue, just over a minute long, is what I was looking for. In case the player is being difficult, the link should point to 36:53, between tracks 10 and 11: Dear Underground Music (In General) / The Difference Between Reality and Delusion.