I spent nearly thirty years trying to name this song.

Every title I considered seemed wrong. Too grandiose. Too literal. Or, perhaps worst of all, suggesting that I actually understood what I was writing about. Which I didn't.

One morning, while shaving, I considered borrowing a convention from classical music and simply assigning the composition an opus number. Of course, that would imply that I'd written enough worthwhile music to justify cataloging it.

I haven't.

Most of the songs I've written over the years aren't worth singing in the shower, let alone dignifying with an opus number. It reminded me of something I used to tell my pastry students: “I've invented three desserts in my life, and two of them suck.” So I dismissed the idea.

Then, a few moments later, as I was spreading shaving cream across my face, I found myself asking the same question yet again.

“What the hell am I going to call this thing? What title do you give a song about God… life… the universe… ev…”

The razor stopped halfway down my cheek. I stared at myself in the mirror. You wouldn't dare. And then I burst out laughing, spraying shaving cream all over the mirror.

After nearly thirty years, the song finally had a title.

Opus 42.

After all, if you're going to write a composition about something that defies human understanding, the least you can do is acknowledge that you haven't got a clue what the answer is.

The origins of the song go back to approximately 1995 or 1996, when I first became deeply interested in the Tao Te Ching. Interested might be an understatement. I studied it. Wrestled with it. Got thoroughly lost in it. And then went back and did the whole thing again.

For years, I'd return to the same passages and discover entirely different meanings depending on where I happened to be in my own life. I once loaned my copy to a friend. A couple of days later, he returned it and cheerfully announced that he'd read it and gotten quite a lot out of it. I remember thinking, Wow. You're a hell of a lot smarter than I am. I spent three months trying to understand the first paragraph.

The Tao Te Ching isn't really something you consume and then set aside. It's something you sit with. Something you revisit. And if you think you've understood it completely on the first reading, there's a reasonable chance you've missed the point. That uncertainty became the philosophical foundation of “Opus 42.”

I wasn't trying to explain the universe, God, existence, or any of the other rather substantial subjects that have kept philosophers gainfully employed for thousands of years. I was trying to explore them. To circle around questions that don't necessarily have answers. To create something that wasn't particularly interested in arriving anywhere. And that presented an interesting musical challenge.

Initially, I assumed the song should sound Chinese. The Tao Te Ching is a Chinese text, after all, so that seemed reasonable enough. There was just one minor problem. I didn't know the first damned thing about Chinese music. What I did know, or thought I knew, was the sound of the sitar.

I'd grown up listening to George Harrison, and somewhere along the way I'd developed a rather simplistic understanding of Indian instrumentation. In my head, virtually everything with that distinctive buzzing, bending, resonant quality was a sitar.

As it turns out, that's rather like listening to an orchestra and deciding that every instrument is a violin. When I finally began seriously arranging the composition decades later, I discovered that what I'd imagined as a single instrumental voice was actually an entire musical ecosystem.

Sitar. Israj. Sarod. Ravanhattha. Tanpura. Each instrument has its own character, function, and musical vocabulary. Some provide melody, others drones, texture, or rhythmic punctuation. And I had to learn how they worked together.

Not how to physically play them, mind you. That would have required a degree of patience and manual dexterity that I don't possess. But I did need to understand how they were played, how they were phrased, and how their distinctive sounds were produced. I ultimately found myself studying the performance techniques of ten instruments.

One of the most important discoveries involved pitch bending.

With instruments such as the sitar and sarod, notes often aren't simply struck at a fixed pitch. They're approached, bent into, and ornamented with subtle movements that give the music much of its character. If I programmed everything as rigid, perfectly tuned notes, the result might have been technically accurate but musically lifeless. So I spent a great deal of time introducing tiny pitch variations and bends, sometimes to nearly every note in a passage.

It was painstaking work. But it made an enormous difference. And it also helped me understand why the composition had remained unfinished for so long. For nearly thirty years, most of “Opus 42” hadn't actually existed as a fixed arrangement. I knew the introduction. I knew the verse music. I knew the main melodic theme. And I knew one particular lyrical line: “The universe expands as God inhales.”

Beyond that, much of the composition was essentially an extended improvisation.

I always knew there would be a drum solo, a Western electric guitar solo, and Japanese taiko drums, which I've loved for years. But none of those passages had been fully composed. Whenever the song wandered into my head, usually while driving, walking the dog, or doing something equally inconvenient for writing music, I'd improvise whatever came next.

The solos changed. The transitions changed. Entire instrumental passages appeared and disappeared. Nothing ever settled into a definitive version. So when I finally began recording, I wasn't simply reproducing something I'd been hearing in my imagination for three decades. I was discovering it.

The introduction was familiar. The verses were familiar. And then I'd reach a point where the music needed to go somewhere else.

Where?

Excellent question.

I hadn't the slightest idea. But rather than regard that uncertainty as a problem, I decided to embrace it. After all, wasn't that rather the point of the composition? A musical exploration of something that can't be fully explained probably shouldn't be constructed around the assumption that I know exactly where it's going.

Of course, philosophical enlightenment is all well and good until you actually have to arrange the damned thing.

One of the first technical problems I encountered was the relative sparseness of the Indian instrumentation, particularly when heard through ears accustomed to Western orchestral arrangements. The israj, which carries much of the distinctive buzzing melodic material, presented a particular challenge.

It has a relatively gentle attack, easing into notes rather than striking them sharply. That gives it a beautiful expressive quality, but it makes writing faster passages considerably more difficult. My solution was to compose the line using a viola, then transfer the notes to the israj. The viola was supposed to be nothing more than a temporary compositional tool. But when I listened to the two instruments together, I discovered something unexpected. The viola added body and warmth without overwhelming the israj's distinctive character.

The combination sounded fuller, more balanced, and more comfortable to my Western ears. So I kept it. Then I tried the same approach with the ravanhattha, doubling its lower buzzing tones with a cello.

That worked beautifully, too.

Suddenly, the arrangement had acquired the depth I'd been struggling to achieve.

Later, when I submitted the sheet music to ChatGPT for analysis, it pointed out that I'd stumbled onto an approach reminiscent of something George Martin had done when arranging George Harrison's “Within You Without You.” Martin had similarly incorporated Western strings alongside Indian instruments to create additional body and texture.

I confess, that brought a rather substantial smile to my face. I imagined George Martin looking down from the pearly gates, nodding approvingly at my little discovery. Naturally, I couldn't resist including a small tribute to Harrison and Martin with the laughter and applause at the end of the recording. But perhaps the most surprising aspect of the entire composition is its harmony…or, more accurately, its almost complete lack of harmonic movement.

When I began recording, I hadn't realized that the entire piece would be built around a single chord. E minor. Not merely the key of E minor. The chord itself. There are no conventional chord changes throughout the composition. Everything develops through melodic variation, instrumentation, rhythm, texture, and the interplay of different voices over the underlying E-minor drone.

The tanpura establishes that foundation and holds it in place.

For eight minutes.

Eight minutes of musical development without changing chords.

I'll admit, I'm rather pleased with that.

It was also an interesting challenge, because Western popular music relies so heavily on harmonic progression to establish movement, tension, and resolution. Take away the chord changes, and you have to find other ways to sustain the listener's interest. Melodies become more important. Instrumental colors become more important. Small rhythmic changes take on greater significance. And silence becomes part of the arrangement.

But the more I worked with it, the more appropriate that approach seemed. The song wasn't supposed to travel from one harmonic destination to another. It was supposed to exist within a single musical space, changing constantly while remaining fundamentally the same. Rather fitting, considering its philosophical origins.

And so the composition ends much as it begins. No conventional chorus. No dramatic harmonic resolution. No grand declaration that the mysteries of existence have finally been solved. Just a return.

A drone that continues without needing to justify itself. A musical thought that doesn't so much conclude as simply carry on. If “Opus 42” feels unfinished, unresolved, or occasionally just beyond your grasp, that's intentional.

The composition isn't meant to provide an answer. It's an invitation to contemplate the question. And perhaps, after all these years, I've finally come to understand what I was trying to write.

Not an explanation.

Not a conclusion.

Not even a destination.

It's a breath.

And the universe expands.