DEJA BLUES – The Emotional Interplay of Music and Memory

There’s this song I discovered long ago on the Putamayo album, Acoustic Africa. It’s called "Baro," by the Malian singer Habib Koité. I’m sure I liked the song the first time I heard it, but gradually it’s become not just my favorite cut on the album, but one of the dearest pieces of music I know.

Now, when I listen to Baro, the music—the sweet layering of Koité’s silky voice with chorus, guitar, the marimba-like balafon and some gentle percussion—brings me to tears. So what happened since that first time I heard it that has loaded that song with so much emotion?

         It taps into…that dimly-lit corner of my
         consciousness where many nameless,
         placeless scraps of emotion reside.

FROM ROMANCE TO RAP
There are two distinct ways in which music might move me. The first is with its sheer intrinsic beauty. Beauty that resides in the sound itself—the sublime melding of melody, harmony and tempo that, like a beautiful painting or stunning piece of architecture, simply delights my senses.

Reynaldo Hahn’s operatic "L’Heure Exquise" is an example. It calls up no part-
icular emotional association for me, but even the first time I heard it I found it achingly beautiful. 

Even more personal than music’s intrinsic beauty is its evocative power. Its ability to recall moments or periods in the past. Sweetness or sorrow; pleasure or pain; gladness or grief—or any combination of those emotions.

It doesn’t have to be one particular experience or feeling either; sometimes it simply taps into that dimly-lit corner of one’s consciousness where many nameless, placeless scraps of emotional memory reside.

Of course, this kind of appeal is subjective. To one person, the music that recalls emotion might be a gentle, romantic-period pastorale; to another, a tender ballad; to yet another—don’t ask me why—it’s the harsh scolding of gangsta rap.

      John McVie said that song would “make
      grown men weep.” Turns out I’ve become
      one of them.

GROWN MEN WEEP
Often, the appeal grows over time. The first time I heard Christine McVie’s (of Fleetwood Mac) "Songbird," I was below decks on a 32-foot sailboat, crossing North Carolina’s Pimlico Sound in a gale. I was hunched over a plastic bilge bucket, barfing my guts out.

McVie’s ex, John McVie, once said that song would “make grown men weep.” Turns out I’ve become one of them. How could the most obvious of associations—the sheer misery of that bilious day at sea—have given way to such tender, weepy allusions?

I have a pretty good idea what those allusions are, but I'll spare you the TMI violation.

Aaron Copeland’s "Fanfare For the Common Man"—all three magnificent minutes of it—stirs entirely different feelings. Instead of melting me, this piece makes me stand tall and feel invincible.

While "Fanfare's" sounds themselves are undeniably thrilling, I’m not sure what the emotional association is, unless it’s a cultural one. A meaning derived, I suppose, from this type of music’s use in grand ceremonies and their depiction in film.

Oh, and don’t get me going on Puccini’s "Nessun Dorma," from Turandot. To me—admittedly far from an opera aficionado—it’s easily the most stirring aria I’ve heard. Especially in the hands of Pavarotti, whose performance takes the emotion to the next level.



FULL OF IT
This intrinsic/associative duality brings to mind something I used to tell clients during my graphic design career about the value of a good logo. 

The design, I explained, should be thought of as an empty vessel. It has to be unique and pleasing to the eye, of course. And the really good ones employ devices to make them especially memorable (like the the illusion of movement, or an interplay between positive and negative space).

But filling the vessel with meaning, connecting the visual appeal with feelings that build a positive impression, occurs over time. It comes from repeated association of the symbol with customer experiences. It’s the way the receptionist answers the phone, the quality and pricing of the organization’s products or services, the integrity of its personnel.

Isn’t this what happens with music? Some pieces appeal to us simply for their beautiful exteriors; others, the ones that not only appeal to us, but grow on us, get “filled,” over the course of many exposures, with intensely personal emotional associations.

Let’s make this a conversation. Do you agree that music taps into some well of emotion in nearly every human being? What musical works do that for you? If you hear them too often, does the intensity of the feelings diminish?

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip #102

 Savor the luscious fusion of sense and emotion.

There’s a place where all the sense impressions that come into you churn and stew with stuff that’s looking for a way out.

You keep what you need, but the essence, the aroma of it, exudes through your skin, inviting more, inviting others.

(Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers!)

THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY – The Distance of a Grandfather’s Love

The 9:10 commuter train heading back to Boston squealed to a stop. I bent down to hug her, her wiry wisps of arms reaching up ‘round my waist, that perfect pixie face pressed against my side. I told her I loved her, turned and dared not look back.

I stepped aboard and took a seat. Clambering over my carry-on, I put a hand on the window and looked out.

There she was on the platform, scanning the dark-tinted windows—all but opaque to her—like a sailor craning to make out a speck on the distant horizon. For an instant, I thought our eyes might have met, but she looked right through me.

A deep desolation pulled me down, the kind a dear, departed spirit must feel when fully present with, yet unnoticed by, a loved one revisited.

The train jerked into motion. Still delving the dark, blank windows, she walked along just beside me, barely keeping up. Now I pressed both hands and my whole face against the glass, grinning, waving, weeping.

And then she saw me. Our eyes locked, the gulf between us suddenly narrowed nearly to arms’ length. Beside me she ran, faster and faster, her limbs a spritely fusion of flailing and grace…and she beamed.

I turned, looked back, and those few seconds swept her from my view. But that image, that sense of being at once so far and so close to that sweet girl, will stay with me until I am once again on that magic train…and I am the one looking through that dark window for a glimpse of her.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip 116

Ride a wave.

PHOTO: Pixabay

How exquisite waves’ chimera motion; their pulse moves 
laterally; their blood does not.

Like emotion, they lift and let you fall, yet you are still afloat. 
They flow through you, but they are not you. 

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip #102

Explore the place where sense & emotion overlap.

There’s a place where all the sense impressions that come into you churn and stew with stuff that’s looking for a way out.

Here is where true meaning and much of memory forms, and the essence, the aroma of it, exudes through your skin.

HOW TO BE IN THE MOMENT – Tip #102

Savor the luscious fusion of sense and emotion.

There’s a place where all the sense impressions that come into you churn and stew with stuff that’s looking for a way out.

You keep what you need, but the essence, the aroma of it, exudes through your skin, inviting more, inviting others.

(Happy Thanksgiving to my U.S. readers!)

THE BRAINS OF THE OPERATION – The Difference Between Women and Men

PART TWO OF TWO PARTS

COULD YOU PLEASE BOX THAT?

When my wife and her women friends get together, I listen in awe to how they communicate. Indeed, they seem to move seamlessly from one topic to the next, following what might best be described as a non-linear train of thought. At times, conventional language comprises, if anything, only part of the conversation.

A woman will start out with what sounds like it’s going to be a sentence, but then, after little more than the subject comes out, she’ll either start a new sentence or be interrupted by someone else’s sentence fragment. To a male, it would seem that almost no real information is exchanged, yet everyone seems to understand completely.
 
My wife does this with me too, often with disappointing results. She knows exactly what she’s saying and assumes I do too, even though her actual words have not delivered a complete thought.

   Occasionally she’ll take 
   issue with something I never said, but which she 
   knows I must have been thinking.

To be fair, she's equally confounded by my thoughts and how I attempt to convey them—or not convey them. It baffles her how much time I devote to assigning my thoughts and plans their proper boxes. She’s sometimes hurt by the fact that my box for apologies (like that of most men) is either missing or in very poor repair.

Occasionally she’ll take issue with something I never said, but which she knows I must have been thinking.

PRESENT TENSE; FUTURE IMPERFECT*

Men and women have different concepts of time.

While I have separate compartments for past, present and future events, to my wife they’re not so easy to distinguish. I choose to think only about the present and maybe, once in a while, the future—not at the same time, of course.

For her, the present and the past blend together, the latter continually haunting her (as it does lots of women) through guilt. Because this requires stuff from two boxes to intermingle, men tend not to do guilt very well.

THANKS TO EVOLUTION

Remember, these things are not just momentary reactions to specific circumstances. Nor, for the most part, can they be changed. They’re hard-wired (or, in men’s case, hard-walled) into our brains, and for good reason.

Ages ago, before evolution worked this wonder, lots of men multi-tasked and harbored guilt. But those who did were all either slain by enemies or eaten by wild animals, both of which were, in those days, better equipped than they were to focus on the task at hand.

  Isn’t it a miracle how those respective strengths  
  have come to compliment each other so well?

And some women, before they’d mastered their comprehensive thinking, sensitivity and intuition, failed utterly at raising children and maintaining social connections. Neither those women nor their families survived either.

So here we are today, women and men, both products of that evolution, both very good at some things, not so good at others. Isn’t it a miracle how those respective strengths have come to compliment each other so well?

My wife and I once took a community education class in meditation. After a few frustrating sessions, she declared that, alas, she was going to be the first person in history to flunk meditation. She just couldn’t, she explained, shut off the flow of thoughts, plans and worries going through her head. Now, as I picture that endless tangle of wire in her head, I finally understand.

"A woman marries a man expecting he will change, but he doesn’t. 
A man marries a woman expecting that she won’t change, and she does." ~  SOURCE UNKNOWN

* Apologies to Dudley Riggs's Brave New Workshop, Minneapolis, for using the title of their hilarious comedy production.

THE BRAINS OF THE OPERATION – The Difference Between Women and Men

PART ONE OF TWO PARTS

Are you as confounded as I am about how the mind of the opposite sex works?
I suspect I’ve spent way too much time trying to figure this out. Usually it’s like trying to prove something doesn’t exist; it just doesn’t work.

Still, as with all of Nature’s mysteries, investments of a little awareness, curiosity and faith often are rewarded in small, yet significant, ways.

    ...it can go one of two ways. We’re left either 
    in awe (perhaps a better term would be utter 
    frustration) or in stitches.

If we’re lucky, we might come to understand and appreciate our partners better.
If not, it can go one of two ways. We’re left either in awe (perhaps a better term would be utter frustration) or in stitches.

OFF THE TOP OF MY HEAD

Comedian Mark Gungor has a brilliant act in which he sheds some very helpful— and hilarious—light on the differences between male and female brains.

On each side of the stage, about twenty feet apart, stand two pedestals. Atop each is a sculpted head, one of a woman, the other of a man. He walks over to the male bust and lifts off the top of the skull.

Inside are rows of neatly arranged little wooden compartments. Not only are they separate, he explains, under no circumstances can they be allowed even to touch each other.

In a man’s brain, he continues, everything—work, money, house, kids, sex—gets put into a different box. The guy can take a thought or emotion out of one compartment and move it to another if necessary, but it can only be in one box at a time.

What’s more, he says, men have no trouble at all shifting their focus from one box to another. They can even choose not to deal with any of the boxes at all. In other words they can, at times, think about absolutely nothing.

  Every thought, every emotion, is connected to  
  everything else. And it can never be turned off!

Now Gungor walks across the stage to the woman’s head. He begins explaining why women have trouble with men’s compartments, illustrating this by acting out a typical Mars-versus-Venus marital spat. Just as Venus is throwing up her hands in utter frustration, Gungor lifts off the top of the head.

The audience roars.

Inside, filling the entire cranium, is a tangled mass of copper wire—one continuous strand, he points out. Every thought, every emotion, is connected to everything else. And it can never be turned off!

(TO CONTINUE WITH PART 2, CLICK HERE)