What is the Question?

Side streets, reflections, and the sound of solitude

I haven’t touched a guitar in almost two years. Coming from somewhere, maybe an open window nearby, I heard a beautiful rendition of Satellite of Love played on a piano today. It was a quiet afternoon, on a quiet little street, in a quiet part of town, a feeble breeze caressing my face and ruffling my hair. Funny clouds moving swiftly in the sky above, white on blue. Stop for a moment, I said to myself, close your eyes, and savor this.  

I walk everywhere, it helps that the city isn’t huge. Sometimes, when in a rush, I jump on a tram but get off two or three stops early. Sometimes I take side streets to stretch my way on purpose and hear the sound of my steps on cobblestone. The sound of solitude. Many view solitude as something to avoid. I like being alone, and hearing the sound of it. Something you don’t hear when you’re with others. You don’t hear the sound of paper, of pages turning when reading a book, don’t pay attention to the echo of your steps in a narrow side street, don’t hear the swish of one part of your body scraping against another. 

There’s magic in hearing music coming from a distance, or from the next room. It’s soothing, relaxing, reassuring. It’s the low frequencies, and the fact that the music blends with the sound of the environment; I heard Brian Eno talk about this once. Also, it makes me think there’s a community around me doing things. I love being alone, but not alone as in the only being on a planet all for myself: in my loneliness, I love feeling part of a community. 

And so I stopped and closed my eyes. Someone was harmonizing that tune with delicate chords. They’d have a go, then stop, try different voicings, put pieces together. Things like that drive me out of my mind, they’d sing on top, in a slurred, unarticulated way. Voice helping fingers find a path. I watched it for a little while, I like to watch things on tv, I continue to myself, in my head. It felt good. Some songs are just part of us, I think. This is one of them. A simple song. Isn’t simplicity the key to everything?

In The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the answer to “Life, the Universe, and Everything” -- the Ultimate Answer -- is forty-two. I’m not spoiling anything here, I suppose. Who hasn’t read The Hitchhiker’s Guide? The Ultimate Answer is given by a computer called Deep Thought after seven and a half million years of calculations. And when everybody finally hears that, they’re understandably disappointed. Is that all you’ve got to show for seven and a half million years’ work?, they ask. I checked it very thoroughly, says the computer, and that quite definitely is the answer. I think the problem, to be quite honest with you, is that you’ve never actually known what the question is. 

I’ve reflected about this a lot over the years, after my first time reading The Hitchhiker's Guide. I remember that passage made me take a break from the book. A light, humorous novel that can be read in one sitting. Yet one where the underlying philosophical message is powerful: despite the human tendency to seek deep meaning, life’s most profound questions may not have answers, and sometimes the quest for answers is more important than the answers themselves. They’re right, I thought, what’s the question? 

But it was the Great Question! The Ultimate Question of Life, the Universe and Everything! They replied. Yes, said Deep Thought, but what actually is it? A slow stupefied silence crept over the men as they stared at the computer and then at each other. Well, you know, it’s just Everything, they continued, weakly. Exactly! said Deep Thought. So once you do know what the question actually is, you’ll know what the answer means. Then they all try to find a question that would have forty-two as a plausible answer and, toward the end, someone comes up with How many roads must a man walk? Which is also the beginning line of Blowin’ in the Wind, possibly the most popular Bob Dylan song. 

What if everything were much simpler than we thought? What if the answer to diseases and misery and pain and hate were something so obscenely simple we just can’t see? Something that’s been before our eyes, in plain sight, forever? The answer, my friend, is blowin’ in the wind, sang Dylan. Which has got to be the equivalent of a forty-two. But what if the answer, as simple as it may be, doesn’t make sense to us because we don’t know what the question is? 

I haven’t touched a guitar in almost two years. But tonight or tomorrow, I think I’ll pick one up again. And play Satellite of Love. Do more of what makes you feel good, someone said. Or wrote. Sounds like the answer to a question. Who knows what kept me away from something that makes me feel good, for so long. Maybe I thought that I should seek deep and complicated answers. Or maybe I just didn’t know the question. 

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