With work winding down at close to 10pm on Monday night, a conversation began between a colleague and I, the last two refuseniks in the office.
He told me of a television programme about The Beatles that he had watched, and express his awe and wonder at the depth of their musical ability.
Talent such as theirs comes along once in a universe, he volunteered, and, besides, they happened to come along at the right time - soon enough after the introduction of the television for the device to still be a novelty, and soon enough after the Second World War for a ravaged nation to be seeking something to belong to.
Furthermore, my colleague ventured, musical notes have a finite quality: eventually, humans will have used every harmonious combination possible, and so nothing new or original will ever be produced again after an arbitrary point in time.
For one of the only times in my life, I came down on the side of the argument which declares the limitless potential and beauty of our species. As with science, fallow periods in music, in politics, in art, in any discipline, are inevitably ended by the onslaught of one or more iconoclasts who seek to redefine the field.
It is akin to the statement: at some unspecified time in the future, every sensible combination of letters will have been exhausted, and writing will therefore cease, save for the repetition of ideas already previously established.
To be iconoclastic, though, all that is required is to arrange a nonsensical combination of letters, and have it stand for the repudiation of all previously established ideas. Mqri.
Mqri is the demonstration that resourcefulness and creativity will never be expended. When dissonance is the only option that remains, people with talent will nevertheless mould it into something original and, in its own way, beautiful.
