And the band played on...

So I recline and listen to all these shades of green... until tonight, four distinct frog types worked in concert with both a gamelan orchestra in the jungle town across the river, and the gentle jazz I often have going quietly behind me, while the rapid rhythmic drone of small winged beings did the rest of the soothing work. I am sure the conversations of the frogs are influenced by the quality and volume of the music. There is often an odd harmony, as if all are working from the same score, and perhaps they are, a cosmic one. Human music or not, the jungle sounds grow deafening over time, the way any sound does to human ears in the absence of conversation. And the louder they become, the more tranquil this world. These sounds, even the human ones, are at least two thousand years old. Gamelan is basically gentle orchestrated percussive music produced by anything that makes music when struck, whether or not music was it’s original purpose: coconuts, cauldrons, could be whatever. No gamelan orchestra sounds like another, but the effect is invariably like a family of independent wind chimes expressing their love for each other. In everything there is a comic element, and I find it here in the presence each night, even occasionally tonight, of the “sorry” frog, performing his occasional “sorry”-sounding repetitions, perhaps because he or she isn’t very musical. It’s all quite glorious, but reading a volume of short stories about Dutch colonists losing their sanity in this cacophonous verdure over months and years sends an eerie serpent slithering down my spine. How much enforced serenity can a foreigner (“bule” -- BOO-LAY) endure?