Yesterday I asked a question, and then proceeded to
not answer it. I pontificated on the joys of watching Laurel & Hardy,
without explaining why I think it’s still funny, 80 years after it was made.
But maybe I proved the point I had made in my opening paragraph – finding
things funny is such an individual experience that it’s not easy to explain to
someone else? Yes- that sounds like an excuse I can get away with!
I may try and revisit that later in the week and answer
my own question and tell you what I DO find so funny about them.
The point of this rambling opening paragraph is
this: I’m not going to frame today’s writings in the style of a question. I’m
going to learn from yesterday’s error and just title today’s essay in the form
of a statement of fact:
WHY I FIND MUSIC SO POWERFUL
(using 5 songs as an example)
Again – I’m not sure this can be quantified, but
I’ll give it a go. To me, there is something that a beautiful melody can stir
inside me that mere words on paper, or a performance on a screen, can’t generate.
Don’t get me wrong – I’ve read books that have reduced me to tears, and I’ve
cried away at a movie or two, but I haven’t been MOVED by those in the same way
as I have by music. Sometimes it can be provoked by a personal memory. “Birds”
by Kate Nash, for example. It isn’t a masterpiece, but reminds me of my early
days with Philippa, as she played it to me to explain how she felt.
Other times it’s the combinations of meaningful
words, and their perfect placement within the tune, that turns on the
waterworks. Bob Dylan’s ‘Simple Twist of Fate’ can still make me blub after
hundreds of listens. Knowing what is coming doesn’t diminish the power, if anything
it heightens it.
And in other instances, it is just the sheer beauty
of the musical composition that renders me a gibbering wreck. John Barry’s
soundtrack to ‘Dances With Wolves’ is full of tunes that stir my heart and pull
it apart at the same time. Why? I don’t know. There is just a magic in a
certain combination of notes that my emotions find impossible to resist.
It’s not just tears, either. There are the certain songs
that provoke anger, excitement, optimism, laughter. I can be in any manner of dark
mood, but if I put on Morecambe and Wise singing ‘Bring Me Sunshine’ I cannot
help but feel uplifted. I can feel flattened to a sofa and lifeless but give me
the full 2m 33s of ‘Twist and Shout’ by The Beatles and I’ll be on my feet
happily dancing. I think it’s something primal, unknowable. Those with the
ability to craft music that changes us are alchemists. Songsmithery is a gift
akin to miracle making.
I think what I’m trying to say is that I don’t care
what it is that makes me react in this way, I’m just incredibly glad that it
happens.
RC 13-5-20
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