Against the "A"

The Psychic Envelopes want to participate in this Times contest—"In Search of the Lost Chords"—but they're not entirely sure they get it.

Love these two epigraphs, though:

The sweetest sounds I’ve ever heard are still inside my head.
— Richard Rogers

We discussed the widespread contempt in which ukulele players are held - traceable, we concluded, to the uke’s all-but-exclusive employment as a producer of chords - single, timeless events apprehended all at once instead of serially. Notes of a linear melody, up and down a staff, being a record of pitch versus time, to play a melody is to introduce the element of time, and hence of mortality. Our perceived reluctance to leave the timelessness of the struck chord has earned ukulele players our reputation as feckless, clownlike children who will not grow up.
— Thomas Pynchon from “Against The Day”