Author: DC
During the 24 hours after Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America, I seemed to run into all of the politically-aware people that I know. Some are left-leaning, others fall on the right of the spectrum, and of course they all had an opinion on what had happened and they had all experienced waves and waves of emotion as the results came in. Obama supporters felt elated, relieved, proud, shocked and stunned. His opponents felt sad, wary, worried and fearful. But what struck me that day wasn’t that people had reacted strongly to the events, you expect that during every election. The thing I noticed was that people, as they processed their responses and tried to make sense of what had happened, were actually physically reaching out to each other. The Obama fans were wrapping each other in celebratory hugs, exchanging high-fives and fist bumps and handshakes. The McCainites were literally leaning on each other for support, arms around shoulders, hands resting on the curves of backs, hands ruffling hair.
The election was significant to each of the people on a personal level – they all believed in their favoured candidate, felt strongly that the world needed that man in these difficult times, and sensed that this was one of those moments upon which history pivots. But it was particularly powerful for them because it had become a communal experience, with people thousands of miles apart, people who might not normally be friends or even talk to each other, and people who would normally shy away from participating in “mass movements” all drawn together as part of something bigger. Victory or defeat weren’t things to savour or mourn alone, they had to be shared with others, oftentimes in that most direct form possible – physical human contact.
As I walked home on the night after the election, I tried to think of anything else in recent memory that had made me feel so connected to people, a part of a bigger movement, like one of the swallows who fly in a perfect “V” formation over my house each spring. And I could only think of one thing that had made me feel so wired into the world, and it wasn’t an epic event or a single shining moment – it was something that had been around me forever and was there almost all of the time. It was music.
Music utterly shapes the way in which I relate to people, and more often than not has been the thing that has made me feel bound together with others on a level that goes beyond the same-place-at-the-same-time ordinariness of things. Starting at the most basic level, music is my solution to personal shyness. I find it hard to talk to people I don’t know very well already, small talk is not my strong point, and that initial period of stumbling to find common ground kills me. And music is the way around that – simply asking someone who their favourite bands are and what music they like changes the conversation from something a bit intimidating into something fun and manageable. If the most basic communal experience is sitting around and talking to people, then music is my way in.
Music isn’t just a conversational tool either, as it has the power to offer definition to who we are and, by extension, who we are likely to bond with. As a case study, look at the much-maligned “emo” community. The mainstream media couldn’t have misinterpreted what emo stands for more. They posit that it is eroding social interaction and values by encouraging kids to dwell on their inner feelings rather than outward actions, and by eroding individuality and replacing it with Hot Topic standardisation. Somehow this is meant to result in the development of a generation incapable of true friendship, who believe that there is only one “right” way to be. In truth, it’s about precisely the opposite – it’s about people in a fractured world in which it is hard to make friends trying to make that process easier by giving an initial upfront indication of who they are. “If you have black hairdye and a Paramore t-shirt like mine, then I’m probably going to like you”. It’s about people who don’t really know themselves yet clutching onto the one thing that they are absolutely sure of – that they adore the music they listen to – and projecting that outward. They aren’t less individual just because they love something that everyone else does, because that love comes from somewhere true and pure and absolutely individual inside them. And, crucially, of all of the musical “scenes” it is by far the least elitist of all – yes, you have to have something in common with the rest of your group, be it a love of My Chemical Romance or All Time Low. But then it doesn’t matter what else you do or love, you can listen to black metal or American hardcore or even the Backstreet Boys, and it makes no difference. As long as there is something there binding you together, that’s all that counts.
Music also acts as a support system for those times when your sense of connection to the communal seems to fade, when you feel a little isolated or that what you are going through is so unique that no-one else could understand it. Having someone sing a line that connects with you and that speaks to your personal situation can restore that connection and remind you of what you are part of. In a recent interview with Spin Magazine, Thursday singer Geoff Rickly hit on exactly this when he explained that his band had called their new record Common Existence because “no matter how big the tragedy seems in your life, it's just the same thing every other person out there is going through. Even the biggest things in our lives are just very commonplace and everyday”. He’s not trying to downplay the severity of personal situations or to say that individual experience doesn’t matter; he’s just saying that you’re rarely as alone as you think you are. Sometimes, having a song remind you of that can keep you from spinning off out of orbit.
Finally, just as the election victory gave people such an immediate thrill or shock that they felt physically compelled to lay hands on each other, so can music bring us together with other people in the most immediate sense. Anyone who has been in the crowd at that moment when a concert went from being merely “good” to “absolutely transcendent” knows what I mean. Sometimes when you hear the right song at the right moment, you don’t just want to sing or dance or headbang alone. You want to grab the nearest person to you, to put your arm around them, to shout back the lines together. Sometimes we don’t just want that direct connection, we crave it.
Once again Geoff Rickly understands this, singing during the climax of Thursday’s seminal song Sugar In The Sacrament that “this is all we’ve ever known of god… fight with me, let me touch you now”. For a lot of people, that feeling they get when they listen to an amazing song, that feeling of beauty and thrilled excitement, is the closest they’ve come to a religious experience, is the thing that gives them the “First Black President” jolt of energy, is the moment at which they feel connected to everyone and everything. And it makes them want to come together with people to love or fight or have sex or talk or just to be. It has certainly had that effect on me; I remember listening to Thursday play that song at the Electric Ballroom in London, England. I had my right arm around the shoulders of Dusty, one of my very best friends since primary school. I was screaming the words back at Rickly with everything I had in me. I was staring at the fearsomely bright plain white lights above the stage, because I felt like I might explode or cry or lose it altogether if I looked down at the band tearing at their instruments onstage. Every quarter second a moving body would bounce off me, spin around me, slam into my chest, and it felt totally perfect. And when the song had ended, and the band had filed offstage, and the house lights had gone up, almost no-one left the room. People stood there, milling around, hugging total strangers.
No comments:
Post a Comment