So many processes, so many adjustments, boil down to the resolution of dissonances. I remember once reading an article on Bruckner’s symphonies which described their progressions from start to finish, very broadly, as the gradual resolution of musical tensions declared in the introduction, so that each finale concludes in a sort of harmonic nirvana.

Since reading that analysis, I’ve found myself constantly tempted to see the resolution of dissonances in other facets of life. In the world, as in music, there are rules of harmonic progression. The way to consonance is not through a magical leap, but step by step through the dissonance and often through other dissonances along the way. Somehow, that movement itself—the shift from dissonance to consonance, from tension to release—generates huge bursts of energy, in a kind of spiritual propulsion.

Maybe the culture of this era and this part of the world has become a bit overstuffed with dissonances. We’ve piled up the contradictions, like stacks of unopened mail or festering garbage. We’ve defaulted on our debt of synthesis. We carry throbbing nodes of tension in our bodies, untended contradictions that we medicate with painkillers or (somewhat more constructively) melt away with massage. The Alexander Technique fascinates me because it tackles those physical dissonances directly, and focuses on eliminating the contradictions in how we use our bodies: the ways in which we waste muscle energy by working against ourselves.

We could use an emotional Alexander Technique too. My favourite definition of suffering, which I’ve mentioned before, is also about dissonances and self-contradiction: the dumping of emotional energy into the unalterable part of a problem rather than putting it to work on the alterable part. Changing the focus to the changeable has the same sort of effect as shifting a revving car from neutral into drive.

Evolutionary methods of creating and constructing things have always appealed to me, maybe because they use that same motive power of resolution. Test-driven development, in the software field, harnesses the fixing of failing tests to drive software construction. Every software feature begins as a failing test; the new piece of code makes the test pass; and then the process repeats until everything is finished. Resolution of dissonances.

Ever had a dream? From what I understand of sleep research, one theory of dreams is that they occur as a result of the brain’s method of transferring memories from short-term storage to long-term storage. In the process, our brains revisit the memories, and neurons fire together that would not ordinarily fire together from our sensory experiences. This creates the weird, dissonant concepts in our dreams where we are in our parents’ house but also in Nepal, and multiple people are the same, and things happen in nonsensical sequences. In a sense, the brain tries new linkages between concepts, and the resolution of the resulting contradictions creates our long-term memories of information we’ve received.

Where I think we get stuck is refusing to go through the dissonance in the first place. If I try to circumvent the whole process by shying away from all forms of confusion, contradiction, disagreement, tension, anxiety, what-have-you; and fake a sense of peace by suppressing everything in myself that isn’t yet resolved, I’ll not only lose the propelling force of synthesis, but also allow my well-being to be eaten away by the festering tensions.

Yeah. So be like a Bruckner symphony. That’s all I’ve got for tonight, since I’m off to resolve dissonances for the next eight hours.