Stuck in the Verse
I’m reading a study right now about non-cognitive skills gained by children who study music and it’s making me feel like a kid again.
The study says a bunch of stuff that I bet all of us could read and think, “well, heck! I coulda toldja that!”, so I’m not ‘gonna toldja that.’ I’m gonna teldja this:
The community aspects of music can be expressed in a variety of ways. Communal singing often fills us with a sense of partnership. We do not see ourselves as competitors but take on each other’s perspectives to put our own desires to the background for the benefit of the group. More importantly, the sensation of singing along with the music creates a sense of belonging. Even when our favorite song comes on the radio, the compulsion to join in creates an attachment and of self-acceptance.
One of the most frustrating parts of music right now is not being able to sing together. It’s hard to join in when the other person doesn’t hear my voice for 3 seconds after theirs.
The term, ‘song of my people,’ kept rolling around in my head this morning. I kept thinking about how in early Greek society, song form developed out of lyrical poetry, and stories were spoken, yet had song-like qualities as they were accompanied by the lyre. There is a scene in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, where the ruler of the universe postulates that people aren’t actually coming to him for advice, they are just coming to sing to his cat, and it just sounds like questions to him. The idea that song and music are as much a part of the perceiver’s perspective as it is the performer’s, and that music is as much a medium of collaborative understanding as any other form of communication. Without some sort of vocabulary, we may as well be talking to our cats.
I’m almost certain, there was an overwhelming response from the world of cat-lovers at this point about the benefits of talking to our feline-children. Yes, yes, cats and dogs are people too. I am not disputing this. What I was more thinking about was how much I miss “talking” with all of my music friends right now, and that it isn’t something that can be substituted with technology, (at least not until we figure out how to circumvent the speed of light, as latency issues will never be a thing of the past until data transfer becomes instantaneous,) and will surely heal itself, as it always has, throughout history, with time. While, I no doubt miss talking to my fellow musicians, as, on a weekly basis, we would gather and say things with words to each other, like the common greetings, and ‘how-do-you-do’s’, I miss the conversations that we would have with our instruments and singing, and how we could share our conversations with a crowd full of people, how we could not see ourselves as competitors, but take on each other’s perspectives to put our own desires to the background for the benefit of the group. I miss, I miss, I miss the chorus. The refrain. But like any tale worth telling, I know it will come back again.
A friend of mine once said, “Don’t bore us, get to the chorus.” I think we are all a bit bored right now. But don’t worry. The versus are important. It’s hard to know how good it is to sing together without having a story to share once we get into the crowd.
This had me singing along this morning.