Of Music and Morals, Or, A Shameless Pitch for Kickball, Typhoon, Andrew Bird, and The Arcade Fire

“I write songs about what I cannot draw, and I draw what I can’t write songs about.” -Devandra Banhart

Dear ol' deZengotita won back my affections (after having completely lost them during his rant about children's books) as he began to analize music and why it is so important. He eloquently summed up why people connect via music more so than by any other means (explaining this by saying that friends can disagree on almost any topic, except for music... and humor, which has elements of music in it).

For a while I've been trying to write about and pinpoint the feeling of why it is that you feel so much closer to someone who loves the same music as you. This is after realizing through many random examples that I feel closer to and have more respect for people that share my music affections, (even when we otherwise have pretty much nothing in common,) even more so than: other thespians, outdoor school kids, and even fellow socialists (the last one's less so than the former examples, but still.)

And so as dZ explained what the Greeks realized, I saw that my struggle for words was not simply futile, but there was something there that'd I'd been trying to grasp for a while. Here's what I'd come up with:

--"Although it’s not openly discussed, there is a certain connection attained amongst a group of people that have gone through such a soul-opening experience as an intense, close up live show. There is a sort of quiet recognition that they all now share something, some common understanding of a truth that was reached just moments ago, and they all saw it. There is an air of common respect and peace in the room so that even a person who before would have had no reason to take the time to notice another, now sees them as almost an extension of themselves, as if the air coming through the trumpet on stage had some magical power to open people up. Part of this is because everyone inside knows that what just happened will be lost in translation to the outer world, and it is only these people here who will ever understand this other state where the only emotion is the music.

..."I’ve found this especially true at certain live shows. With some bands I feel such a strong connection to them, and something so strong yet unexplainable that I become entirely unaware of what’s around me and purely focused on the music, as if that’s the only real truth, the only thing that can communicate anything, the only thing that does and ever will matter. For example, while standing feet away from Andrew Bird, just taking in his voice and his inhuman whistling (that shouldn’t even be called whistling, but that’s the closest thing there is that we have a name for) I felt choked up and just in another state where the only emotion is the music. This relates to the state of being at a live version of the anthemic “Neighborhood #1: Tunnels” by the Arcade Fire, and just feeling so connected to the one song that it takes over all your feelings. I guess this is why I feel like there is a sort of higher understanding between people that truly listen to and seem to “understand” certain music, because you realize that there must be something either about the person in the first place, or that the music has opened up, that they must have inside of them in order to appreciate it.

..."I love it when there’s something about the music that feels much bigger than you, and bigger than the people playing it- like it’s transposing the emotions of an entire era, or an entire group of people. Often these types of songs seem to have a sort of tribal, native, feel. This is especially noticeable when it is either purely instrumental or there aren’t words that are understandable, yet the music has a feeling that is so strong that you feel a need to move with it, sometimes even cry. I’m particularly thinking of Typhoon’s “So Passes Away the Glory of the World,” a song which starts out with a slow, deep, soul-wrenching chanting of the line “Sic transit… Gloria mundi,” Latin for the above mentioned title of the song.

..."What draws me in to the band Kickball is the singer’s voice. The way he sings makes it seem like every word is painful, and getting choked out of him- making each word extremely valuable but also hard to listen to. There is something as well about Typhoon’s main singer, but it’s different than the way Kickball pounds every word into your soul."

dZ clarifies that I'm not entirely crazy, that in fact certain ancient Greeks linked music and morals closely, because with music being the one form of media that is actually real as opposed to representation, it "blends with emotion, becomes emotion-- or "passion" as they used to say."

He says that the reason for this superior ability to connect is because "music takes hold of you on levels of your being that precede intentional articulation, levels of being that CONTAIN what you can put into words."

Having written about this, I now have more respect for dZ, as cocky as he may be.