The Locrian
by Mark Dvorak
There are but seven modes
in Western music.
Some offer brightness and hope,
others only darkness
and melancholy.
Each a mood.
A character.
A season of the year
aptly named
a long time ago
by some ancient Greek.
And the year begins Ionian,
the major scale,
Do - Re - Mi - Fa - Sol - La - Ti …
Singing these tones,
each interval of the Ionian
begets the next mode.
Dorian begins on “Re,”
followed by the very same
Ionian tones
sung in order
from there.
The whole thing
starts once more
this time from “Mi.”
Then from “Fa.”
And “Sol” and “La” too.
When the circle of “La”
completes itself,
the unresolved “Ti”
is next,
the last to arrive.
Welcome the Locrian.
The Locrian is unstable.
It bears no true tonic.
Its friction is eternal
and can never come home.
The Locrian is old and it is young.
It is sweet and it is bitter.
It is breath.
And death.
The Locrian is abstraction,
a prevailing star
forever on the horizon
waiting again
for November’s cruel wind
and low, weird light.
Letting go is no longer
an option once
the Locrian has arrived.
It is breath,
sour, sweet, young, old.
It is what we hear
when we sleep at night
and it is what we sleep
when we can no longer hear
at night.
The Locrian is silence
left behind.
The silence of lovers gone
and of love not tried.
The silence of songs
we no longer remember.
The silence of a child
running toward us
across a memory.
The silence of a breath held.
Or a breath caught.
A last breath.
There are no songs in Locrian.
It is the place where songs
cannot go.
It is simply chaos.
And randomness.
The Locrian is silence.
filled by eternity.
11.13.22