When
we say we are moved by the music we love, what part of us is
being moved? Or what part of us is left unmoved, or moved the
wrong way by music we don’t like? If we listen repeatedly
to only the music that pleases us, is the prime mover the music
or the pleasure principle, which Freud believes underlies all
human endeavor?
Among
the many mysteries immanent in music, I never cease to be amazed
by the fact that a simple line of melody (it could be a Beatle
tune or Cole Porter standard) will attract, let’s say,
a million listeners. Change but two of the notes and 10% of
the original listeners will lose interest while 10% of previously
unmoved listeners will suddenly like it. Change half the notes
and an entire culture might drop it while another picks it up.
Or
how is it that music that once moved us, falls flat six months
later? And how do we come to gradually -- or overnight -- love
a genre of music that for years we didn’t give the time
of day to? Since in each of these latter cases the music remains
the same, we are the variable: older, wiser, dumber, jaded,
jilted, in love, out of love, alone again. The persistent mono-tonality
found in rap and hip-hop and their progeny might be the reason
we quickly lose interest in them, or in any routine that doesn’t
vary. But there is some music from which we never tire, that
is so rich and nuanced and renewable it never fails to resonate
no matter how much we change during the course of our lives.
What is surely noteworthy is the music that moves us when we’re
25 and continues to move us when we’re 50 – (something
we, in our manifest wisdom, dare not ask of our spouses). This
is not to be confused with a nostalgia for a particular past,
which includes the music of that past. As creatures of habit,
we often default to the music we like and feel comfortable with.
Which is why we’re often uncomfortable or unreceptive
to new genres of music, or established genres we’re not
familiar with.
Could
it be that the music we’re convinced we don’t like
is simply a language we don’t understand? If I don’t
know the experience of loss or alienation, despair or rejection,
how can I relate to their musical counterparts? When I hear
someone recite a Chinese love poem I would never say I like
it or don’t like it, because I don’t speak Chinese.
There was a fateful day when I had to admit to myself that the
opera I thought I hated was simply a language I didn’t
understand. It was only then that I was able to open that door
and learn to meet what was there on its own terms. “Humility
is short-lived and must be born again in anguish,” writes
Patrick White.
The
music that we let in, or can’t keep out, is the music
that finds us in the truth of who we are: unmasked, unedited.
We all have emotional needs which we seek to satisfy, the realization
of which confers pleasure. Left unfulfilled, an existential
void develops into which music moves or moves us towards the
music that answers to our emotional deficits: if I am alone,
confused, angry, misunderstood, I will unconsciously seek out
the sympathetic musical equivalent.
Adolescence
is an emotionally turbulent stage of life and is why music is
so important in young people’s lives, and is why adolescents
can listen to a song over and over again, and then never again
when their circumstance changes. A happily married family man
at 35 is perforce on a more even emotional keel than when he
was 15. His music preferences will reflect that. The sweet harmonies
that I couldn’t get enough of at 15 – the perfect
antidote/anodyne to my disharmonious state – hold no interest
today because my relationship with the world has changed. (I
now listen to static, mono-tonal electrical impulses and Lobotovach’s
Symphony with Bulldozer and Orchestra).
Just
as there is for every life occasion a friendly melody that is
better than a best friend because it never lets us down, there
isn’t a culture in the world that doesn’t have its
own music. Seratonin levels in the brain are positively affected
when we are enjoying our favorite songs. Could it be that the
first truth of music is that it’s a cleverly concealed,
all-purpose pharmaceutical masquerading as cultural artifact
whose appreciation we are encouraged to cultivate? As a running
commentary on its pleasurable effects as well as the times we
live in, music has never been so widely available now that our
once unwieldy stereo systems are no bigger than computer chips
that accompany us wherever we go. It may have taken 2000 years
and a revolution or two in high-tech, but music has finally
overtaken religion as the number one religion: halo and hijab
have been replaced by headphones.
But
as happy as we are listening to our favorite music, we are less
happy when we meet people who don’t share our music preferences.
Why do we feel that if we like a particular music, everyone
else should too, and when they don’t, we say they don’t
get it? We can’t prove a particular song’s excellence
because it’s not mathematics, but we feel strongly that
it has merit or otherwise we wouldn’t like it, even though
we may change our minds about it six months from now. Nonetheless,
on a good day, when we’re thinking outside the box, we’ll
concede that people who like music we don’t, feel as strongly
about their preferences as we do about ours. Does that mean
we’re back to the pleasure principle again, that people
want to share their likes and dislikes because being in agreement
is more pleasurable than disagreement?
Perhaps
the only thing I can say with any conviction is that the category
of music is much larger than the sum of its notes and notation,
just as “three chords and the truth” isn’t
so much a definition or defense of Country & Western music
as an acknowledgement of its mystery. For when all is said and
sung, there are more questions than answers, which is perhaps
the best reason for the existence of music, because when we
are listening to it we are pausing to re-tune and reconnect
with our fugitive selves as we journey through life.
