(This post may be a bit maudlin; skip if that is not to your taste. I’m compelled to write this today, right now.)
Until today, I haven’t listened to any music since January 2. The first two and half months of this year spanned one of the most profound depressions of many I’ve had in life. Music is very important to me, but my experience of music is pure emotion. Yes, I like the technical aspects, too, and I’m going to give a taste below. But mathematical though it may be, music is pure emotion, and it is the connection to the divine.
Music moves me emotionally to what seems an extreme degree compared to the average person; I couldn’t tolerate any of it this winter as I was afraid of what it would bring out. After a period of being unable to stop crying, the wall came down. The tears stopped, and my emotional temper went cold. All I wanted was quiet, even if that came at the expense of any positive emotions.
”You’ve imposed a hard emotional celibacy on yourself,” my shrink said recently as part of a conversation in which he hoped I would consider a different approach (I haven’t). He was referring to my life, not just my recent depression. He’s right.
There will not be a romantic love for me; that ship has sailed (this is a decision, not a complaint). When the parody of love and a surfeit of casual intimacy was a big part of my life years ago, I over-indulged and what I did with love I did badly.
There are friends I am lucky to have, and whom I love. When a deep despair comes for me, I’m a trying and not very good friend to them. I hide, I don’t answer calls because I can’t bear to be seen, and I can’t give them what they deserve. It’s a character flaw, and I wish it weren’t mine.
The writing has slowed, too. There are several essays that have been trying to be written for months or longer that I have not been willing to touch this year. The pieces I like the best are what someone once described as elegiac; that’s a mood that seems natural in the writing I think is my best. But they smart, those pieces. They can’t be written when in despair.
Some of them will come soon though, I think.
Today I listened to two songs. Mind, my way with these things is not something anyone should emulate. It’s not a good example, but it is what I do. The pieces I went for are reliable tearjerkers for me; my approach is masochistic and ambivalent. Yes, no. Stay, go. I want to cry, I don’t want to cry. In the end I always give in and push a finger into that wound with a piece that makes me weep.
Today’s torment is Harry Nilsson’s “Without you.” Younger people will be familiar with Mariah Carey’s creditable cover, but nothing tops Nilsson’s original. If you listen to this, please put on a good set of headphones and close your eyes to keep out visual distractions.
My God, it hurts so good.
Aside from a listener’s personal associations, though, why does it hurt so good? Here’s a bit of music theory. Now, I’m a musical dilettante, and only know a fraction of what real musicians know. But if you give basic music theory a chance, you might find an entire universe of aesthetic and emotional depth in music suddenly opens that you never knew existed. That’s what happened in my thirties when I took my first musical instruction.
What makes “Without You” so achingly good is musical suspension. This is when a piece sustains a note that does not belong to the chord, the harmony, dominant in that section of the song. Note carefully: even if you have no idea what I’m talking about with these terms, your ear knows, and your heart knows. You’ll see that you know when you listen to the video below that explains it. Music is innate to humans; it’s your patrimony too even if you think you don’t have a musical bone in your body (you do).
A suspended note introduces a slight dissonance, an emotional tension that begs to be resolved and released. As salt on top of a dessert brings out the sweetness of the sugar, a suspended note sharpens and deepens the harmony. A V-7 chord uses suspension (playing the seventh degree of the scale along with the V chord; the seventh note does not belong to the chord that begins on the fifth degree), which is probably why I love it as much as I do. A suspension is a beauty mark, a mole whose wrongness only makes the beautiful more so.
The video below explains this with musical examples. I’ve inserted the video at the correct time-stamp for the section on suspension and “Without You.” It’s from a BBC series called “How Music Works”, and it is the finest popular documentary on music I’ve ever watched. I urge you to watch the entire series. Be amazed at how much you knew in your gut, and how your auditory world blooms with a little knowledge that you thought was just for professionals.
The work of the suspension is unintentionally reflected in the song’s lyric. Perhaps there’s a universal principle around contrasting opposites that unveil truth and painful beauty.
You always smile, but in your eyes your sorrow shows. Yes, it shows.
That was my wedding song in 1985. My husband passed last May after nearly 40 years s of marriage...
Musically-induced catharsis isn’t maudlin, it’s a sacrament — which is why all great religions invest their most emotional rites with music (prayers, funerals, marriage etc.).
We don’t need to know how music works technically in order to be deeply moved by it, fortunately.
That said, your analysis and the “How Music Works” video’s exposition are both spot-on (speaking as someone with a doctorate in classical composition).
Another supremely merciful gift of music — in addition to the tragic catharsis — is its miraculous ability to elevate mood better than medical interventions can: Bach is my Luvox as well as mouthpiece of my despair (as in his Lotti-inspired Crucifixus).
Thanks for your beautifully-articulated thoughts and insights.
“Life without music would be a mistake.” — Nietzsche