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My 8th grade English teacher, who was completely mad and would have made a brilliant college professor, did strange things like hang a blue feather from the wall clock and a rotting carrot from the overhead projector. One day he announced that he would no longer be using our names but would instead be seating us according to the Dewey Decimal System. We would each be assigned a number, with the option to earn back our names, should we so desire. He was epic, too.

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Ok after reading this post I probably spent way too much time trying to find the word you describe but to no avail, yet finding lots of other musical words along the way. I didn't realise music is so complicated and very technical!

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You are talking about 2 slightly different things at the same time: the counterpoint is the mixture of 2 melodies giving birth to something beautiful that couldn’t exist otherwise (following the rule that the result is better/different than the sum of the initial parts), while at the end you’re talking about the impression/impact left by something quantitatively small yet qualitatively important. I cannot find what you’re looking for but your text made me reflect about several things.

First, that small but meaningful character encounter makes me remember Waiting for Godot by Samuel Beckett, which is even more extreme, as Godot never shows up in the play yet everything revolves around his much anticipated arrival. The emotional quality of the situation resembles to what you describe, something elusive, delicate. Also, makes me remember the term of yugen in the Japanese aesthetics (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_aesthetics ). I find this aesthetic quite remarkable, as it deals with high-level emotions that are peculiar to the European mind; there are terms there that have no translation but highlight experiences we might have encountered. This kind of eerie melancholy you feel regarding the secondary character might be a yugen.

Second, regarding the counterpoint, it made me remember Tao Te Ching (https://www.unl.edu/prodmgr/NRT/Tao%20Te%20Ching%20-%20trans.%20by%20J.H..%20McDonald.pdf ) with the line "Being and non-being produce each other. Difficult and easy complement each other. Long and short define each other. High and low oppose each other. Fore and aft follow each other." This kind of interplay between several elements (the opposites creating harmony in this case), this relationship that gives birth to something new, is also typical for the Eastern philosophy. On a more psychological note however, the contrast/counterpoint can either help with describing the main melody/character (acting as a mirror) or can focus on the process (you begin with death, the suggestion of finitude, as a reminder, and this triggers a lot of unconscious emotions).

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