As I drifted off to sleep, the 2009 Metric song "Gimme Sympathy" was playing in my head.
As I entered the hypnopompic state, most of the song had fallen away, leaving the pre-chorus:
We're so closeTo something better left unknownWe're so closeTo something better left unknownI can feel it in my bones
That last line -- with bones understood in the slang sense of "dice" -- led into a brief dream scene. I was sitting at a large round table in some kind of casino, rolling a handful of dice. Just as you can "feel" the tip of your pen on the paper or the tires of your motorcycle on the road, I could feel the dice hitting the tabletop, rolling, and coming to rest, and I could feel on which face each had landed without looking.
These were ordinary six-sided dice -- Asian-style, with the aces and caters in red -- but the game we were playing with them was called Seven Eleven because the four had a value of 7, and the six had a value of 11, while the remaining four faces were counted at face value. The value of a given throw was not the sum of the numbers rolled but their product. Thus, for example, if you rolled a two, a four, and a six, that was worth 154.
After I woke up, I realized this was a perfect system for solving a problem I have blogged about before, that of "The linear ranking of dice rolls." If each die face (except the ace) has a prime value, and we take the product rather than the sum, then each possible roll yields a unique integer, and these can be ranked straightforwardly from greatest to least. I may experiment a bit with the Seven Eleven system and see if I prefer it to the Air Hexactys.
7 comments:
Had you thought of that song consciously? The quoted lines in particular seem like an objection to Leo's recent post.
It depends on how you define "consciously." The song spontaneously popped into my head as I was falling asleep. I agree that it seems a riposte to Leo, although I guess "something better left unknown" isn't exactly encouraging.
"Better left unknown" in whose view? Genius suggests the song is about optimism versus pessimism, which fits as a rough analogue to the sync argument. But we could take it another way: There are those who want Truth kept hidden, and the resultant obliviousness is widespread. Is it better to remain ignorant because some of that Truth would be difficult to bear? "Who would you rather be?"
genius.com/Metric-gimme-sympathy-lyrics
Hm, it's interesting that such a spontaneous thought brought on a dream leading to an answer for a tangible problem. Almost like... a second layer of objection?
My own guess is the "something better left unknown" could be a reference toat least a couple things, one of which would be the details of the Numenoreans and the 2nd age, the other relating to events at Doriath, specifically, in the 1st age.
Probably relates to your hypnotic phrase of "flos scampi", which would seem to be a pretty direct play on words. As you mentioned, flos campi means "Flower of the Field". But "scampi" applied to the name of a dish that one eats (like shrimp scampi), and it also refers specifically to a lobster-type creature. In any case, the double meaning of a flower that one also cooks and eats is pretty Pharazonian/ Eressean, in my opinion.
My guesses above, though, are also informed by my own dreams yesterday morning.
First, was the phrase "Salmarillion swallow", which was soon afterward followed by "Lacuna".
Salmarillion, I think, is a word play on Silmarillion - Tolkiens' book - but incorporating the name of Salmar. I know it is another Tolkien name you don't want to remember, but this is one that I have guessed was another name/ identity for John-Thingol.
The fact that we have the name of a book that is "swallowed" I think reinforces that John connection, given imagery in Revelation of John eating a book (and also, as a tangent, could tie to that lazy lion eating a book as well).
The "lacuna" word completes the riddle for me. This word had first come up when you had related your Tirza dream, and the fact that it was a "Lake". I had looked up that word and found Lacuna, and the reference to a pit or hole. In looking up the word again this time, I noted that the first mention is to a "blank or missing portion in a manuscript".
So, a blank or missing portion in the Silmarillion, perhaps. There have been two instances of that story I've called out as being incomplete or gaps. One is the true story of the Numenoreans and Pharazon. The other is the account of the sack of Doriath and Dior-Joseph's death.
The meaning behind "Scampi" is "a bending, bow, curvature", and this ties to that first story with the Numenoreans, where after they destroyed the flowers, the world was permanently changed and became bent or curved. More on the second...
The Salmar-John connection in my mind connects very directly to the account and players at Doriath. The use of Salmar for John-Thingol here is probably done because in Tolkien's story, he was the brother of Omar. Omar is an identity/ name for Dairon, and thus Brigham Young. Just reminding you of the connection.
The events at Doriath and the death of Joseph-Dior in the Silmarillion were written by Christopher Tolkien and his graduate assistant, and not by Tolkien himself. Tolkien just didn't have much on that, and the two of them took great artistic license in pretty much just making up whatever we have about that story.
That chapter "The Ruin of Doriath", by the way, is numbered 22, which I think is synchronistically relevant.
Anyway, if there is a "lacuna" in the Silmarillion, chapter 22 is definitely it. Daymon and his sources attempted to fill that gap in his own writing, but I've maintained that it is a fabricated account and that a true account - however bad it might be to learn the truth of it - would come out at some point. This could reference that. And it wouldn't be pretty, and might fit the definition of things better left unknown, depending on the perspective.
Anyway, getting back to the swallow reference and John, Joseph Smith wrote that eating the book referenced Elias, who would come and restore all things, and I imagine this includes various lacunas in our stories.
In the Book of Mormon, we have other instances in which writing or elements of a story were referred to as things that were better left unknown. For example, in his discussion with Helaman, Alma highlights the Brass Plates, Anor Stone, Ether's record, and the Spectacles. In that discourse, he mentions the Stone that would "shine forth in darkness", but interestingly that one way it would shine would be by bringing to light dark, secret, and evil works:
"And the Lord said: I will prepare unto my servant Gazelem, a stone, which shall shine forth in darkness unto light, that I may discover unto my people who serve me, that I may discover unto the works of their brethren, yea, their secret works of darkness, and their wickedness and abominations".
So, God's servants will learn about the bad deeds done by others.
Interestingly, Helaman is then commanded by Alma that those secret and evil works not be revealed at that time - thus, at that time, "better left unknown".
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