I've used the word octave since I was a child because I've been surrounded by music my entire life. Mrs. Douglas must have explained it to me within the first few weeks of my piano lessons as we noticed how every eight notes we discover another D or B or G--the same note name, but sounding with vibrations exactly twice as high or low. If this is Greek to you, think about how voices sound. We often hear octaves during a sing along because the women and men are singing the same notes except the men are following along one octave below the women. Explaining it seems complicated but doing it is utterly effortless.
Octaves can also be found outside of music. Some traditions which follow the old liturgical calendar still observe the octave of Easter--eight days that circle back to reflect upon and prolong the triumphant celebration. Musicians grasp this terminology instinctively because adding octaves doesn't change the note just as Easter can't be anything except Easter.
Early last Sunday, my father-in-law ended his struggle with an aggressive brain tumor. That makes today the octave of his death--an octave which happens to fall on his granddaughter's third birthday. One might say his death and her celebration are essentially unrelated events which only confirm the absurdity and dissonance of human existance. They should, by all accounts, be held apart to avoid a jarring comparison. To "play" these two "notes" of experience as an octave would only result in an anguished, unresolved clash devoid of any meaning or harmony. We've reached an octave in time, but the notes are hopelessly different: a failed octave.
Something suggests to me that there is a dimension in which death and life sound together as easily as boys and girls singing "Home On The Range" in octaves around a campfire. In some unknown theory of cosmic music, the notes of life and death simply resonate as different frequencies of a shared note--a note which is both the Source and Ground of our being. (Thanks, Paul.)
We have a ways to go before funerals and birthday parties for little girls keep company with each other. Until we can sing them back together, our hearts will just have to listen for the octave.
