Maybe a scientific explanation is not needed. If we think of the Delaware Basin as another kind of well-tuned clavier, then it could have captured something also perceived by Bach. His "territory," after all, included the universe, and, like the Delaware Basin, his ear was tuned to the "music of the spheres." Wasn't the Well-tempered Clavier his attempt to tune nature? Was not his a heavenly gift?

I think the fugues of Bach and fugue of the Castile carry a lesson about those things that we create. In a fugue, a simple beginning is transformed into a complete composition. In the Castile, a simple response to the seasons was propagated, over time, to became longer cycles of precession and orbital eccentricity. In life also, our early creations, wanted or unwanted, become the themes we repeat and elaborate. If we think of it this way, the disposal of anything we create runs contrary to our experience. And yet, the practice of tring to dispose of the unwanted is so ingrained within us that our lives would change radically if we were prevented from discarding those things we have created or acquired.

Borehole ERDA 9. Center of WIPP site

Why should our collective lives be any different from a fugue or from any process that builds and becomes more elaborate over time? Why should we be exempt from an obligation that comes with growth, and change, and evolution? If this means that we must guard our nuclear creations forever, then we should prepare to train its guardians. If this means elevating a mundane profession such as garbage disposal to a priesthood, so be it. Who knows what forms of art might emerge from such waste?

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