Doctor Misery’s City of Music By Nick Cascino

About the Author

Nick Cascino is a media theorist, part-time musician and aspiring astrophysicist attempting to integrate knowledge across the realms of Quantum Physics, the creation myths of ancient cultures, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, and the superintelligence embedded in progressive jazz, musicals and operas. He wrestles with the great paradoxes of human nature, how the fundamental building blocks of the soul create infinite blends of morality and depravity, and how we can reconcile these by revealing the unconscious through music. While he pursues an elusive apprenticeship with the great Neil deGrasse Tyson that would greatly improve his prospects, it’s most likely that he will attain his astrophysicist credentials no earlier than 2039, in time for the Centennials of the 1939 World’s Fair and the Wizard of Oz. He has however, developed a cutting edge concept called QUANTUM AROUSAL THEORY, central to the work of his main protagonist, Doctor Bruno Mizzieri. It’s an artistic concept based on science, mythology, history and complex math equations. It’s long-term objective is enabling the perception of simultaneous realities, but at a minimum it will make you the life at parties. The pillars of this theory are:

SYNESTHESIA– The phenomenon of blending the senses, either naturally or acquired through sensory stimulation.

PERSONAL LEITMOTIFS, harnessing the power of music to blend emotions in addition to the senses.

QUANTUM PHYSICS and other perplexing paradoxes of science and nature.

GREAT MYTHOLOGICAL CONCEPTS as demonstrated in the stories of Dionysus, Orpheus and Prometheus.

THE FINE LINE BETWEEN CREATIVE/DESTRUCTIVE GENIUS as manifested in the artists Richard Wagner and Andy Warhol, who demonstrated the extremes of transformational power and self-destruction.

SYNESTHESIA – A small percentage of our population possesses this so-called “flaw” of the brain that allows the breakdown of barriers between the senses, but all can acquire similar traits through proper training. By applying quantum arousal techniques, we can achieve advanced synesthesia, the blending/crossing of the senses in scientifically applied proportions. As vision, hearing, tasting, smelling, touch and intellectual stimulation merge, our sensorium expands exponentially and becomes wavelike. This permits us to perceive existence as the wavefunction, a range of possibilities, not as one static reality.

Certain activities and experiences enhance arousal/synesthesia in certain combinations and ratios – creating precise combinations can create the proper state of harmonious energy that can lead to the acceleration effect.

PERSONAL LEITMOTIFS – These are musical signposts that set tone and mood, enabling us to go beyond blending senses to blending emotions. They train us to hear how rhythms, melodies, and pitches create a cultural and emotional resonance. Contrasting a piece of music with others or transforming compositions from orderly melodies to jazz improvisations, perhaps accenting them with polyrhythms may help us achieve greater meaning and depth.

QUANTUM PHYSICS – We can impact the harmonic oscillator in the Schrodinger Equation with sensory stimulation, especially with music. Musical force fields are created by sequencing melodies and sensing multiple notes as waves of potentialities. This will create the proper harmonious energy that enables superposition. Then we can perceive the potentialities that are most desirable. We can sense the slightest entanglements, ratios that cross dimensions and enable us to warp the probabilities of each potentiality. We can weave these waves into a new reality that is preferred, and we can make that the dominant reality, the collapse of the wave.

Let’s contemplate a person or a project at birth. The path of life is never fixed. It’s just a wave of potentialities with various probabilities. Admittedly a person born in poverty has a small chance of gaining great wealth, but that’s just the probability in a sea of potential. We can increase the probability of success by creating a perfect state of mind and harmony through synesthesia and developing the personal leitmotifs. This however is just the base that nearly anyone can achieve with a set of arousal techniques in proper combinations and ratios. We must further accelerate these developments through recalibration at the quantum level. Certain activities that blend the senses/emotions in the proper ratios can speed us up, such as dancing, singing, wine/tea-tasting, aromatherapy, music-making, and let’s not forget the power of COMEDY.

THE MYTHOLOGIES OF DIONYSUS, ORPHEUS AND PROMETHEUS – Mythologies sprung from the human mind in ancient times and their characters and stories are similar throughout cultures. These particular gods, serving the same functions as others across cultures on every continent, are most responsible for enabling divine powers in humankind; Prometheus through fire, Orpheus through music and dance, and Dionysus through a combination of several elements. Their stories and their meaning strike at the archetypal structure of the unconscious. Enabling these archetypes is essential to enabling the highest levels of consciousness.

The origins of Dionysian worship are dark, yet remain mysterious. Followers would enter trancelike states through music and dance released with the assistance of wine consumption or natural stimulants embedded in the vine leaves. Similar to the “Drunken Master” concept in Chinese mythology, this is drunkenness that enlightens rather than inebriates, arousing aspects of mental precision previously unconscious. Many scholars have linked the Dionysian ritual to the Tarantella, the Spider Dance of Apulia in Southwest Italy, where dance and music would cure a woman from the venom of a spider bite, either real or metaphorical. Tapping into this reservoir of fire, music and dance, Doctor Mizzieri infuses another transcending catalyst into the creation of the highest arousal state. The ultimate achievement is pure superposition at the perfect level of harmonious energy, like a constellation airborne across a clear sky.

CREATIVE/DESTRUCTIVE GENIUS – In order to achieve superposition, we must transcend the barriers of our conscious mind, entering the realm of pure genius, but dancing on this precipice is dangerous. What enables us to sustain superposition without collapsing into chains of pure madness? Let’s contemplate two geniuses who operated on the edge of their capabilities.

Richard Wagner was one of the most influential artists of the 19th Century and Andy Warhol of the 20th (Wagner would have likely been a regular alongside Warhol at Studio 54 if he’d been born a few decades later). Yet the incredible heights they achieved worked simultaneously with self-destructive behavior bordering on delirium.

Wagner advanced the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the total art form where music, visuals, and story (mainly based on Norse Mythology) coalesce, an artistic achievement of advanced synesthesia. His operas attempted to but never quite achieved worlds entirely transformed into music. Despite composing some of Europe’s best operas, this was a man overwhelmingly deluded by his own ego and belief in his racial superiority. He lived recklessly above his means, constantly relying on those around him to fund his projects and lifestyle. He seduced the wives and daughters of his closest associates. He dangerously promoted anti-semitism in his essays and subconsciously in his operas. Only a few decades after his death, his operas and would become the artistic foundation of the Nazis, helping to ignite the worst Holocaust in human history.

Warhol wasn’t nearly the monster that Wagner often was, but his methods were also dangerous; he barely survived an attempt on his life by a delusional follower. Once he’d achieved enormous commercial and financial success by expanding the concept of art amongst banality, Warhol established a “Factory,” where the Gesamtkunstwerk could be mass-produced across all art forms; painting, sculpture, film and music (mainly Lou Reed’s Underground.) But many who were attracted to his flame we callously sucked of their identity, like raw commodities consumed in an industrial process. Some died young horribly from suicide or drug addiction.

These men broke through the barriers of artistic and social norms and we admire them for this, but they failed their dance on the tight rope of genius and enlightenment. They teach us that we cannot sustain, emotionally and morally, our higher state of consciousness unless we nurture our conscience as well. As we expand our pursuits in AI, quantum computers, fusion ignition, space exploration, and medicine, higher consciousness and conscience must go hand in hand. Wagner’s last work was Parsifal, a story of the Holy Grail and redemption. Perhaps even he wanted salvation at the end, far too late for the demons he unleashed.