For anyone who's ever played in a band, there is no high to be gotten in life that exceeds the moment when all the right notes swell up together, a symphonic wave, and wash over the players. In that moment the feeling of rightness is not abstract, it is absolute; everyone is tuned in, everyone is present, those sound waves are passing through bodies synchronously. It feels like life enhanced, from black-and-white to color, iPod earbud to surround sound.
There are many years of stretching, reaching for the right notes, veering off pitch, squeaking, squawking, banging the wrong drum, scrabbling for the melody like a mountain climber losing their grip. It's ugly and painful, but the satisfaction of the song played well is righteous.
We feel the song in the dark, in our toes, our hips, our heads bopping. The song travels the length of our spines, the strands of our hair, reaching (literally) into our minds. The voice rises up, the heart changes its rhythm; there is nowhere to go but inside the song.
To solely listen is to be alone, but to sing, to dance, is to join oneself to moment.
I am picking up my bass and remembering that each finger being cajoled into position, my right hand learning where the strings sit, my toes tapping a beat my pinky finger might miss, will one day result in that supreme feeling of being part of a song that is so much bigger than I am, a song in which I have a role.
I just finished reading the "33 1/3" series book Murmur. One of the most intriguing ideas put forth in the book is the idea of the distance between pop music and the listener, that the distance itself is a text we read unconsciously. I found myself pondering this notion in the music appreciation elective class I teach (this year it's titled "World of Music" and aims to expose the students to many types of world music that lie outside the norm of pop radio). The big class project I run is to have each student do a presentation giving the history of a song and why they love it. As a result, I listen to a lot of music I would normally dismiss as pop drivel, but today, as I listened to Chris Brown and Justin Bieber singing "Next to You", I got caught up in the idea of the distance between a pop song and the listener, and why top 40 pop is perpetually the domain of teens (and especially girls).
Pop music has always been about the pin-up of a boy's
dreamy face in girl's bedroom (locker, cell phone, facebook profile,
etc.). Anyone remember Tiger Beat? I, too, know the twitterpation a good pair of eyes can cause.
Some teen girls spend inordinate amounts of time writing things like "Mrs. Bieber" on their binders, or changing their surname to Bieber on homework assignments. A few of them feel comfortable announcing to the masses that they are already (top secret!) married to Justin Bieber.
A long time ago, some evil genius (probably Shakespeare) realized the fun to be had in tossing the body-chemistry-induced emotions of teen girls to the the lions of lust and longing (though girls emotions regenerate a bit like Prometheus' liver- it's a never ending blood bath). There is no ceiling on the amount of melodrama a heterosexual girl will tolerate in order to have the opportunity to fantasize that a storyline involving a physically/emotionally attractive male could, in fact, happen to her. There is perhaps no better medium for this than a 3-5 minute pop song. Just ask the Beatles.
Check out this video (I know...but it'll help the conversation):
Pop songs like this one have an inherent space in them that capitalizes on fantasy (vague, literal lyrics), and the "Next to You" video does a great job representing this visually. The video is not about the girls in it, but rather the gaze of the males on the females, the actions the guys will take to be near them. Lyrically, it's about the guy's feelings, the way the girl makes him feel, what he wants from her. (There is definitely another post lodged in the subtext here, about how pop songs enforce gender stereotypes. In the interest of staying focused, I'll save that for another post.) There is plenty of space available between the listener and the song, plenty enough to contain the fantasies of millions of teen girls.
Pop songs appeal to the developmental state of late tweens/early teen: their brains are a-whir with focus on their personal needs and desires. Empathy is a long way off yet (college, I'd say). All that space meshes with a closed bedroom door, lights turned off, iPod juiced up, the energy to make those young men ("Well, Rihanna made him mad!" "Bieber is just confident") into exactly the guys they want them to be. They can even imagine that the voice singing is just for them.
And baby, everything that I have is yours
You will never go cold or hungry
I'll be there when you're insecure
Let you know that you're always lovely
Girl, 'cause you are the only thing that I got right now
I generalize, of course, because not every teenage girl is into pop music (and some teenage boys are!). I also recognize that my inner teenage girl remains: she's just a lot smarter about what kind of man she's willing to drool over.
February marks my one year blog-iversary. Last year at this time I took the desperate measure of finding something fulfilling to do; the stretch between winter vacation and spring vacation is incredibly
difficult for teachers-- students' bad behaviors amp up, the days are long and
dreary, and it's hard to find opportunities for rest and rejuvenation. I was downtrodden. My early entries were time consuming pieces of writing that allowed me to stretch out in reflection, to re-enter places I hadn't visited in a while. I'm thankful for this space that is free of criticism and open to my writing whims.
During this last month, in thinking about various posts and not having the time/energy to complete the ones I started ("oh yeah, this time of year is really hard!" -- it took me seven years of teaching to notice the pattern), two recurring questions gelled.
Why do I write so much about the music of my youth?
Why don't I write more about teens?
Obviousness was tapping me on the forehead with her index finger. Writing about the music of my youth is my way of writing about what I do every day. Teens slip into my writing in moments when they seem least present because those little buggers have my heart. Journal poems about my garden become poems about my students
In the summer, the vines twist around each other like
ecstatic children
They reach away
from the wire fence and find each other in open gravity
Unfurling leaves
taste the air like reptile tongues
and then poems that reflect the worries I harbor; I only have a year and a half longer to get them ready for high school!
Not all these green
hearts will make it,
Some will harden
through,
retreat from root and life,
crack from the
vine.
I don't know what this year will bring, but I hope it will be full of more blog entries because the good it has done my soul to spend time writing is incalculable.
I lift an LP in honor of this occasion, my blog-iversary. Thank you, dear friend, for reading.
