Background Music

Sometimes music is background.

I know that’s uncharacteristic of me to say, since my brain so often is tuned solely into the musical world around me.

But it’s also an entirely true statement. And that’s not to say that the music then becomes inferior because it’s not memorable, per say. In fact, the experience of music can sometimes raise it to a higher place – beyond the scrutiny of style and lyricism and poignancy and relevance we see in most critiques.

In my college creative writing class, my professor often emphasized how we should be exposed to a poem for the first time by having it read aloud to us. It was important for us to step away from analyzing the writing, as our minds were so wired to do, and let the sound of the words do their job.

I will never forget that lesson. Poetry should be an experience. And so too, I believe, should music. A good musician or song should take us away from that place, at least the first time. The experience may then incite our urge to explore and investigate, but hastily stripping apart a song or style of music in an effort to determine its worth should not be our first instinct.

And more so – letting the song exist solely with the connotations of that first experience does not mean that it is any less powerful than the ones we let our hearts and minds decipher into nirvana.

This is, of course, coming from a non-musician, a listener and lover of music, not someone who creates it.

Background music is sometimes exactly what we need.

I think in particular of three fairly recent instances where this holds true for me.

The first, at Orioles Stadium at one of the last Yankees vs O’s game of the season, when Pitbull’s “Timber” filled Camden Yards with Ke$ha’s carefree chanting of the chorus. Despite the disappointment of the awful loss the O’s were suffering, I was thrust instantly back into June of this year, in a smoke-y little grove surrounded by trees.

Here, we danced into the evening, headphones creating the illusion of privacy, yet all experiencing the joy of letting music flood our bodies. This experience more than anything represents Firefly Music Festival, even more than seeing Imagine Dragons or meeting A Great Big World. It was the moment that “Timber” started playing, and I looked over at my friend, at the people around us so different and entirely the same. And hearing the song, even then, in an entirely different situation was enough to set me vividly into everything about that moment.

It had nothing to do with the song itself, but rather the feeling of it, the part where I let things go and moved with it. So, I took the carefree experience of Firefly and brought it with me to Camden Yards.

The second was a summer evening in Annapolis where a little blues band covered the ache of bad news with their infectious energy. That evening, my friend and I walked into the little bay-side restaurant where upstairs a piano man sang the classics and downstairs the blues band urged us to into the dancing crowd, feeling happy even with the weight of our hearts in our chests.

I could not tell you the name of the band, or the names of any of the songs they played. But I remember that they were perfect. For a few moments, we were okay. And sad. But okay.

In the grip of the blues, we were allowed to be happy and sad at the same time, or in spite of each other. At the core of things, that’s what the blues celebrates, is it not?

The third: I am sitting in my car with him, nervous because I know how a date is supposed to end, and yet my mind can’t get over itself – the memories of another him leaving me shaking. The silence is horrible, because it makes my brain louder in my ears, and I lean my head on my steering wheel. What I want and everything I’ve made myself insecure about are fighting with each other in every part of my body.

Patient, he waits. And I turn on my music. It doesn’t matter which song, just something to break up my thoughts. And slowly, I relax.

With his assurance that I would be okay, we kissed.

As a writer, I often want to pick apart the songs that accompany my life, explain every reason why a particular song was the perfect representation for an event or feeling. But it doesn’t always work like that. Sometimes, I am too busy living to analyze.

And I love that music for making me feel like that.