I'm sitting at my computer listening to the song "Pi" by Kate Bush. Her rich, sweet voice sings numbers over the pulse of the music. There's a hypnotic-ness to that pulse that seems to evoke the endless digits of pi as much as her voice does, singing the actual numbers.
The song was shared with me by a friend because a social post I made about my very numbers-heavy novel put her in mind of it. And listening to the numerals slide by, I feel a silly kinship with Kate Bush because of our apparent shared mathematical nerdiness. Most of this song is simply the digits of pi sung beautifully.
"Eight, nine, seven, nine, three, two..."
Then I realize in a blink! A name that I failed to create in the long list of numbered names for the characters in my book... One the Gun, Two the True Blue, Three the Goatee... with all the fun I had coming up with names for characters using that naming system, with all the available numbers and all the available corresponding rhymes, this name was there all the time and I didn't use it.
π the Pie. She could have been a baker.Oh, man. I'm so sad I never thought of that. Why did I not think of that?
It's so strange, after all the time writing and editing and workshopping and editing again, to be in this place where the book is the book, not yet officially out in the world but set in stone, set in words and numbers and unchangeable.
Kate Bush sings, "Five, nine, two, three, zero, seven, eight, one..."
Pi runs to infinity, of course, but a song can't. How did she decide what number would be the last one to sing? How did she know when the song was done?
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