The Everchanging Neverchanging
Those first few times I listen to the song, the sound tastes like red velvet cake with a fluffy buttercream frosting and rainbow sprinkles. It holds the energy of millions of stars like those seen from national parks in nordic countries, where the only trace of light pollution comes from the campfire that keeps you warm at night. Fields of deep yellow sunflowers and prairies of soft cherry blossom trees come into bloom at the midst of the chorus. And by the end of the song all that is left is me, alone, flying into the bright golden day haze and silence.
The song turns on again, but this time, it tastes like sour lemons, it shoves me down a staircase, it stings. It disappears and I thank it for leaving.
It knocks on my door at unexpected moments, it haunts me sometimes, it cordially salutes me sometimes.
It turns off, and turns on, and within time’s and memory’s realms, it tastes different, it holds different energies, it feels different.
Despite its specificities, my analogy does not pertain to the feelings derived from a particular song and my relationship to it, rather, it concerns the collective impact of music in my life, and possibly serves to make a larger claim beyond myself, to music lovers.
How is it possible that the same pre-recorded piece of music, can ignite such a wide array of feelings with only time as a contingency?
And I am aware that music lovers, those who have the sensibility to be touched by sound- may they be scholars or not- don’t share the exact nuances of my musical experience, but they share the fact that upon listening to a song, the portals of deep emotion, imagination and alternate ways of experiencing reality get opened. Music shares its universal nature in the same way that it can be by anyone, it can be for anyone, and one does not have to be a scholar to have deep appreciation, or even deep understanding of a piece. The depths to which an individual can experience music is not due to level of academic proficiency, but to their ability to access such portals. These portals aren’t finite or established, they carry a sense of fluidity- as Guck claims in his essay, Rigors of Subjectivity “uniqueness results from the profound contextuality of each work: a work gains its identity through the "meanings" created from its particular web of internal relations,” to which my next point.
Music has an unmatched ability to morphe, fluctuate, grow, expand, shrink, associate, dissociate. It has the ability to merge into something completely different when we turn it off and on, as if the chemical composition of the song changes while we are gone. And while it is true that the song itself doesn’t change, what it means us, to the listeners, can change drastically. A song that meant something once can mean something drastically different at another point in time, making sound itself be perceived in multiple ways, regardless of its neverchanging nature. From here grows music’s multiple potential infinities through the passage of time, as something that doesn’t vary in its composition, but varies in how it relates to us.
A game of power exists between the music and the listener, found particularly in those songs that have the ability to ignite deep emotion. The interplay lies when questioning how much authority we have over the effects music can have on a personal level. A listener might feel a sense of ownership towards the music, but within the journey of life and personal fluctuations, might come back to the music and feel detached from it. In Cusick’s essay, On a Sexual Relationship With Music, she explores the power play by posing the question, “Who’s on top?”. Essentially, she uses this question to discuss her relationship to music and how she teaches music to her students, but contemplates how it is possible to both let the music be in control, and control the effects of the music as well.
Many times I have come across those who claim they “can’t” listen to a piece anymore, possibly a song that aided the listener through a difficult time, or representative of a romantic relationship, or a moment of transition. Whatever the moment may be, it is not reflective of the listener’s current state. The feeling is that of eavesdropping on a conversation- something doesn't feel right. A conversation of a past self with the piece, a conversation that is no longer dignified to that moment in time- no longer relevant, or no longer necessary- merely not belonging. Then that leaves the listener in the awkward position of holding sterilized weight of past feelings. This weight was once very real and very heavy, but now it feels empty. The song then morphs into both the tangible piece of the past, the relationship the current self has with the past, and the particular mood or situation the current self is in at the moment of listening. The listener then can enter into an ever ending loop, a cycle the bridges past, present, and the feelings stuck in the corners of both worlds- and the worlds between those worlds.
The same can happen in reverse, where a song grows on the listener, having barely any emotional effect at first, but developing into something meaningful with the passage of time.
The relationship can also be contingent on when and in what context it is introduced. Personally, my relationship with Erik Satie’s Premiere Gymnopedie transformed through the years based on context. My experience with the song transformed from deep connection, to outright detachment, to reflective middle ground between stages. These stages I have come to describe as The Shield, The Dance of Paradox, and Naked Dance.
The Shield
I wasn’t the performer, I wasn’t the pianist pressing the keys, but the physicality of setting up a vintage phonograph record player at such a young age gave me the sensation that I was a character in an old French movie—elegant, highbrow, royal- and that I was the player. It allowed for me to have a role in the execution of the piece; as if I didn’t do it exactly as my dad had taught me when he finally agreed to let me keep the turntable in my room, if I didn’t remove the record from its sleeve gently enough, if I didn’t turn the crank in a way that made the needle descend with the suspension one’s arm feels when moving under water, to then make contact with the record ever so softly, the sound of the piece wouldn’t be the same. Later that year, I found my senses recreating that feeling when learning to tune a guitar. I wondered if this was the same feeling the musicians at my middle school’s wind orchestra got when oiling their instruments.
Setting up the piece held greater intimacy than merely clicking a “play” button. This was the only record my eleven year-old self was allowed to keep, or even touch, making the process was unique to that one collection of tunes. The first piece, in particular, as it was the only one I ever got through without falling asleep. This daily ritual of setting up the record, of tapping into a persona that treated objects with such delicacy and care, served the purpose of protecting me from nightmares, or so I passionately believed. It was a practice I began to partake in around a time that I was suffering from frightening dreams. I set up the record player right before I went to sleep to neutralize my room from any evil spirits that could haunt me. In hindsight, I believe it was the combination of desperately seeking for a solution for my nightmares, the fact that this song awed me like no other when my dad played it in the living room (where the record player was originally located), and my childish desire to keep this enthralling object in my possession, that initiated my fixation with the idea that playing Erik Satie’s Premiére Gymnopédie would protect me. And in fact, it did.
My favorite moment of my night-time ritual, though, was upon the touch of the needle against the record. There was a quick time span, a gap before the song started playing, a few seconds at the very most, where a simmering sound similar to the one oil or butter makes on a pan before food gets thrown in, filled the room. It is a sound that lurks in the backdrop of songs when they are played in vinyl, almost imperceptible, but when it stands alone it marks its presence. To me, a combination of its close resonance to the simmering sound, and the idea that the room was in the process of becoming cleansed against evil forces incited me to picture bubbles. Protective bubbles that traveled from the turntable’s horn and spread throughout the space of my bedroom. In this gap of time I aimed to run to turn the lights off and full forcedly hop into my bed. My body sank into my mattress at the echo of the first piano key, the bubbles forming a protective shield around me. Like a perfectly timed scene. And again I was transported into the French film, lying on my back, caressed by the warmth of the hypnotic soothing notes, that soon enough weaved my way into a celestial dreamland paradise.
The Dance of Paradox
I was reintroduced to Satie’s Premiére Gymnopédie years later at one of the most stressful auditions of my life. The choreography created to the piece was the most difficult and intricate pointe repertoire I had come across in my dance career. To be learned and mastered in only one hour, and to be performed as a soloist in front of world-renowned French choreographers and agents. The Frenchness of the song seemed to be a recurring theme, but the feel of it was completely different- foreign. A song that was once so intimate, so mine, became unapproachable. The soft keys that once untapped the most soothing feelings of peace within me, now became sharp poke. A tune that once meant the warmth of family was ripped from its innocence and became almost unbearable to listen to. I had once avidly anticipated the bridging in of the melodic scale that followed the introduction- the growth of tone and the shift in tempo had a particular way of pairing with my inner drum and slowing down its pace to reach the frequency of true bliss. Fast enough to feel the heat of passion; slow enough to feel the pacificity of serenity. Now I dreaded this change in melody, as it was the queue to begin dancing. My heartbeat no longer paired with the song’s tempo, like a metronome unexpectedly increasing speed after being in a state of perfect harmony with a player- something felt off. What once protected me, was pushing me away.
What made the choreography so difficult was how externally it reproduce the grace and calm of the song. When it was well performed, the ballerina had to dance effortlessly, floating through a simple but immensely complex series of glissades and grand jetés, suspending the jumps in a way that synced perfectly with the suspension of the notes, and reciprocate their tenderness. At the turn of the song, the ballerina arrived at a fouette sequence, some of the most challenging turns to be performed, especially when done at the double tempo the music suggests.
My perspective on the song changed, it carried such ease prior to the audition. I concluded that its complexity laid in the lack thereof. I hear the notes so effortless and weightless- how the ballerina should look, when in reality, the performance, the song is intricate in its sparse textures. Like a ballerina, it takes a pianist with great skill to adequately perform the paradoxical nature of the song.
At the time of the performance I gripped on tightly to any spark of protection that lingered from the song played by the record player from my childhood. The actual performance is blurry in my world of memories, like a nightmare, wearing the mask of the celestial dreamlike paradise.
Naked Dance
It is presumed that Satie adopted the term for his title from Dominique Mondo's Dictionnaire de Musique, where the definition of gymnopédie is cataloged as a "nude dance, accompanied by song, which youthful Spartan maidens danced on specific occasions". Somehow this meaning resonates with my current listening of the song. It no longer carries its protective nature in the same way it did before, but I am no longer repealed by it. I have grown by its side- and thus the song has grown with me. I've come to embrace its intimidating feelings. My current listening calls in a sense of naked vulnerability and I have designated its place in my life as a reminder that feeling vulnerable is okay. Dancing naked is okay. So in that sense it has kept its protective qualities- it protects me from gripping perfection’s hands too hard, allowing me to fall back into vulnerability’s arms without hurting myself.
The song, now signifying the acceptance of vulnerability, incites me to ask those difficult questions, but reassures me that they are merely rhetorical, and hold no true meaning within themselves. Do I even have a place in the conversation around Premiére Gymnopédie? I am oblivious to its specificity and to its technicalities. I am not a trained musicologist, nor a trained pianist per se. I do not have the musical skill set to decipher exact pitches, to alphabetize particular notes. But I do know that when the pianist prolongs a note it awakens a conversation with my spirit, it sends shivers down my spine. These questions could seem destructive at first glance, but they are what makes my hearing of the music mine. I should not feel apologetic while listening to the song, or feel out of place in any way. After all, it is my mind, as is, in this moment of time, that allows me to draw these particular conclusions from my listening. It was my mind back then, as it was, when it was carried by my eleven year-old body, that allowed me to feel so deeply protected by a piece of music in a way that only untouched innocence can. I know that my future relationship with Satie’s piece will continue to bloom in distinctive forms, allowing for the song’s infinity. So regardless of my lack of training, or the song’s lineage, and the absence of tangible importance my presence has in the song’s history or legacy, the song belongs to me in a strange way, and it does so forever- like that record player in my room.
Not mine, but belonging to me.
Works Cited
Guck, Marion A. "Rigors of Subjectivity." Perspectives of New Music 35, no. 2 (1997): 53-64.
Emily Wilbourne. "On a Lesbian Relationship with Musicology: Suzanne G. Cusick, Sound Effects." Women and Music: A Journal of Gender and Culture 19 (2015): 3-14