Song Without Words

Quite a few weeks ago, Joel and I played at Faith Presbyterian Church. Our audience was the sound engineer and his wife, who adjusted mic distance and plants through a handful of takes. Mendelssohn was accommodating, with his comfortable accompaniment part for me and lots of opportunities to hear the cello roll out in arced phrases and fill the empty space.

It’s hard to actually write about music, isn’t it? I have written before with time stamps noting motifs or entrances, but even talking about music is challenging. I was pointing out something to my husband the other day and could see my point not landing as I explained, “see? The part where he goes dee-DEE-dee-ta-AH-ree is so distinctive! Nobody else would do that.” Douglas said, “mm-hmm,” as I flapped my hands around, trying to make whatever I was feeling go from being inside my head to outside, across our living room, and into his head. Why was all my humming and gesticulating not making the point?!

But it doesn’t make the point exactly because these are all songs without words. How do you recap a concert? One of the things I miss about watching movies socially, at the theater, is the recap in the hallway on the way back out to the parking lot. You and your friends, who are near enough to hug!, might stand for a few minutes exclaiming, laughing again at jokes, puzzling over evocative scenes. I love this more than I love the movie. The experience is shared and not shared—someone will see something I didn’t, see a resonance with another film or notice a beautifully executed shot. If it’s a terrible movie, a friend might make just the perfect devastating remark you will all return to and laugh over. We’re different and we see different things, and we’re also witnesses together. It’s a cheap way to make you in on something together.

Chamber music takes more effort, more training, more time, and after you see a concert, you will not likely re-deliver punch lines to one another and laugh in the hallway. People try to come up with words for a concert: “exquisite!” “playful!” “heart-rending!” “delightful!” or, if it’s a little less than sparkling, “boring.” But what exactly does that mean? The only way to talk about music after a concert is to locate whatever feeling you have and announce it. The music delights, excites, soothes, bores…and then we carry that feeling around for a while and grin at each other and say, “wasn’t that good?” or “want to go watch a movie now that we’re done with that tedious concert?”

In case it’s not totally evident in this website, or in the format of our concerts, I’ll say here I’m a verbose lady. Language is the most fundamental bridge between inside and outside, and I’m driven by the tantalizing possibility of clarity. Come to think of it, a good speech is the centerpiece of most rites and rituals. We still believe in magic, when it comes down to it. “I will say the magic words and then the world will be made new.” Want to get married? Say the magic words! And we all accept the seriousness of vows and despise vow-breakers. Even in this era of legalism and bureaucracy, the simple spoken oath is woven into all manner of occupations. It’s called “performativity” in language philosophy, and if this really rocks your world you can read John Austin’s book on it (and then you can read Judith Butler and Jacques Derrida and hang out in Parisian cafés, or you can do a quick jaunt through the Wikipedia article like I did).

But isn’t there something funny about doing things with words? Shakespeare sometimes describes words as mere “exhalations.” Kanye West calls them, “spit.” And they’re both getting at the insubstantial nature of it all (the major difference between them being that Kanye is more popular [pause for a beat] I’m kidding! The major difference between them is that Shakespeare was a genius making art for all times and cultures and is still widely read and performed and Kanye wrote a song called, “I am a God” a few years ago and is now a distant fifth place loser in the 2020 Presidential election. Bless his heart.). So here we are in this world with our rampant vocabulary trying to make concrete what is only breath.

So let’s talk about performativity. This is the idea that something immaterial can effect concrete change in the world. When you get married, you speak your vows, you promise God (or the state, for all you heathens), and then you are a wife or a husband. But is that really true? We make the fanfare and we do everything we can to sanctify the rite, but ultimately the truth of the change is borne out in how we live. Language matters, but it can be undone, or it can be deceitful. Music cannot be faked. Music is immaterial and it cracks open our hearts.

And I do know something of performativity, of what it is to be a performer. I’ll sit in front of an audience and enact something done a thousand times in unglamorous practice sessions. We sow the illusion of spontaneity. But the newness will be genuine because a relationship will be christened in that moment, between performers and the audience. Joel and I once had a conversation about how performance is a seduction. I still think that’s true; performance uses beauty to entice you to a different way of being, to consummate a longing to be outside yourself. It asks for a kind of succumbing. I suspect its romantic connotations maybe cloud my meaning, but maybe that’s the point. How do I articulate in so impassive a medium as a blog the particular chemistry and appetite that goes with performance? How do I tell you in so clunky an instrument as language the particular joy of being near someone who perceives without words the rapture of this loveliness?

Joel, thank you. I miss it all.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=20iUj5GOhuo