All my serious lovers have listened to and watched me play the piano. I only let my serious lovers listen because I’ve realized that people can easily get wrapped up in music and feelings too quickly and subsequently do what they will ultimately regret. That happened to my first “boy-toy” E. We kissed on the piano bench of the Baptist church auditorium after everyone had left. He said “Sorry” a few days later and would continue to say “Sorry” for ten months after that. I learned my lesson about music and love. He wasn’t serious. But the other two were. For them, I would compose songs that made no sense, I would play hymns, oldies, Chopin, love songs. The first guy J would sit on the bench with me and watch my small hands, then watch my concentrating face until I started laughing and had to stop playing. Then always he would kiss me. The second guy B wouldn’t sit on the bench with me, always a few feet away. He would close his eyes or look at the ground at first, then look at me. I would smile. When I was through playing, he would hug me tightly, tell me I looked like an angel, then kiss me tenderly. Music drew us closer together. The dissonance and harmony of the notes echoed in our relationships. But like every song, our relationships ended, and they always ended shortly after I played music for them. But in those moments when the music sounded in the air, consumed our ears, and grabbed our hearts, we were close. In those moments, we realized we fit together perfectly.
John Stainer, author of “Music in its Relation to the Intellect and Emotions” says “...when one is held under the spell of an emotional mood, the memory often places before us, very vividly, scenes and memories which have long past by, and it invests them with new meaning and new force”(pg 51).
J and I planned to go somewhere. Now I don’t even remember where that was. Maybe it was school. Perhaps “Wunderland” on Belmont. We even had coupons. He couldn’t find his glasses though. Not in his room. Nor his parents. “Did you look in the bathroom?” Not there either. He lifted up the cushions of the couch. It was of no use for me to help look. I sat on the piano bench and played “Falling Slowly.” I whispered the words as I played. “I don’t know you, but I want you all the more for that.” He stood up and walked closer, standing behind me, his arms now on my shoulders and neck. “Words fall through me and always fool me and I can’t react.” He kissed the top of my head. “I love you,” he said. I stopped playing. We kissed. We found his glasses. We left, together.
The story was a little different with B. We were staying in that night, sitting by the fire. We talked about music. I said I played Chopin for my final recital. “I wanna hear it!” “Eh, it’s too long of a song. I don’t think you’d like it.” We sat up now. A blanket fell off my shoulders. I adjusted it. “Well, then play something else.” He stood up, helped me up, and led the way. It was cold out there, out in the garage where the piano was. B ran back inside for a blanket which he draped over me while I played. I first played “The Piano Man” and he laughed. Then “Falling Slowly.” He stared at the concrete floor, then closed his eyes. “Take this sinking boat and point it home, we’ve still got time.” He smiled. “Raise your hopeful voice, you have a choice, you’ve made it now.” After the song, he hugged me tightly and we walked inside and up to the bedroom. At 3 a.m., I left his place and drove back to my house, alone.
And now, while I am sitting alone in my room playing “Falling Slowly” without a boyfriend for an audience, I sing different words. “Take it all! I paid the cost, it’s too late. Now you’re gone.” And I Bang, BAng, BANg, BANG a dissonant chord.
“Falling Slowly” has evolved with my emotions. It’s no longer a song I associate only with J, nor only with B. It’s a song that I once played for J and he dumped me, a song I once played for B then he dumped me, and now a song I play alone, a song I play nostalgically. Stainer also says this about music and its effects: “The common fellow does not want something entirely new, but something which will recall his old frame of mind and its pleasures”(pg 58). I don’t play a new song. I don’t want something new. When a new lover comes along, I will play the same song. I will feel the same emotions, just in a new room, on a new piano bench, with a new man. We’ll end up doing the same thing. And he will end up dumping me soon thereafter.
Aristotle stated something very similar to Stainer: “Why is sound the only sensation that excites the feelings? Even melody without words has feeling. But this is not the case for color or smell or taste...But we feel the motion which follows sounds...These motions stimulate action, and this action is a sign of feeling.”
After I played for J, our action was kissing, and searching...for glasses, but sometimes even for each other.
After playing for B, our action was pure closeness, followed by a permanent distance.
We were called to action, some sort of motion; we had to do something. In our cases, we, already feeling such a natural connection emotionally and physically, responded to the sounds of the song physically for each other.
After playing for myself, I am called to action, to change. “You must change your life” as the art in Rilke’s poem states. “You must change your life.” It’s all action. Action after sound.
Stainer describes a four-step method in reacting to music, that motion we feel that follows sound. We first have a sensation. The vibrating notes and chords in our bodies and eardrums. These sensations of hearing and feeling then reach our intellect. We recognize form. The beat. The patterns. The repetition. After our sensations and intellect are aroused, we feel a sudden sentiment for the beautiful. Our minds recognize form as being beautiful. And once we finally see the beauty in the music, our emotions kick in.
For those who never studied music and who do not have any musical knowledge, Stainer’s four-step action process is cut dramatically short. He says that the music immediately skips to the emotions, by-passing the intellect, calling to action only emotions and feelings, which are fleeting.
J used to play bass in high school. He said he missed it. Once, he played a chord progression on the piano for me. Right there, he told me everything he knew about music. Bass and that one chord progression. But if you asked him what else he knew about, what else he liked, he would say, “I know she’s beautiful when she plays. I love to watch her play, and listen to her play. It makes me love her.”
B sang, not well, but he sang. He knew almost every song there ever was to know. He knew words. He knew lyrics. He knew the ups and downs of music. “I don’t know, I just love the sound of a piano. And you just look so pretty while you’re playing, like, angelic,” he told me.
I’m singing those words. “Falling slowly, eyes that know me and I can’t go back. Moods that take me and erase me and I’m painted black. Well, you have suffered enough and warred with yourself. It’s time that you won.” Stainer’s right. Aristotle’s right. We feel something after music. Whether that just skips our intellect or goes straight to our emotions, we act upon the music. Those feelings of love and closeness and longing are in me, are present in the music when I play. J heard those feelings in my music. B did too. Straight to emotions they went. Love. Closeness. Longing. This was our action. Kissing was our motion. My love was the sound.
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