#61 The Wrong Side of the Beat

by christian l lopez

Have you ever been stranded on the wrong side of a beat? It happens every now and again. Once every three years, say. You're driving, washing dishes, perhaps carving tiny faces out of radishes. (No judgment here. You're your own person.) You catch a song midway and can't get it to make sense rhythmically. You try to bend the song to your will, forcing it to sound 'right'.

If you've never experienced this, listen to 'A Lack of Color' by Death Cab for Cutie. The beat is a simple up/down, but it's laid over a longer 8 measure period, which is itself laid in a revolving 32 measures. It is a satisfying beat, with a forward pull and a familiar return. It fulfills a need to know what's going to happen next while balancing the desire to solve puzzles. There's an optical illusion I've seen that illustrates this perfectly. A dancer spins in a circle. As you watch, she appears to be spinning in a specific direction, but in a minute she will change. At first you think the image has reversed itself, but it's just your perspective that reversed. It's disconcerting because it isn't voluntary. Even though you can't force her to change direction, you know it was a choice.

It is the same with music. You are listening to a song you've heard dozens of times and can't make it sound like your memory. As it's playing it's taking you with it, powerless to reconcile the two versions. At some point, you know you need to stop and restart the song to get back on track. It's this powerlessness that interests me. It's a decision, but it's not one you consciously make. With the optical illusion you cannot force her to change on cue even after you know the trick. Scientifically, we don't know much about the human experience of music, but I feel like musically-inclined people know about this, even if they haven't consciously thought about it. When science discovers this, it will only put to words something we already know. These scientific revelations are some of the most gratifying. All your life you walk around pondering why things happen and then one day you learn that a conclusion you've drawn is backed by empirical evidence. Those sort of discoveries speak to my personal need to be right.

We listen to music because it allows our brain to do what it does best, solve problems, in the most comforting way possible. A song is a puzzle, something to figure out, and the best songs are the ones you can solve over and over again. The song unfolds as you repeat it in your mind and you get some new part of it in the 10th listen you didn't even know you were looking for. Elliott Smith is perfect for this. The first time you hear his music you are drawn in by the beautiful sound and melody; a line will unravel a memory and you'll be taken back to some well-guarded time in your past. That twinge of feeling that comes when you happen across a scrap of old emotion; a sanitized version of the past. Just the faintest reminder of what it meant to you without going through that shit again. Then you put it away for a while. There's more music out there, what are you, obsessed? Then sometime later you hear it and are reminded of the twinge you felt upon that first listen. Now it's about the song, not what the song brought to you that first time. You feel this fondness towards the song for giving you so much. And you should, that song is fucking amazing. A mixture of memory ties you to the song. Every time you listen you give it a piece of yourself; songs become a part of your childhood, a part of the city.

While the song is becoming a part of you it gets easy to ignore. It becomes background music. You feel like the song can no longer take you anywhere. As our minds grow, they require more substance to entertain us and we move on to the next quandary. A good song can take on new meaning years after you heard it first. You're corrected on a line you misheard and the whole tone of the song changes. Or you just thought that's what he meant, but you realize that he could have meant something else. Classic songs can blow your mind with the 8,657th listen after 2,931 background (read:fruitless) repeats. Of course I'm still dragging Elliott along on this walk of ours.

Evolutionarily, if we can solve puzzles we'll have a better chance of survival. By remembering the hoof prints of animals, we can find those animals, and eat them. By making connections, we carry on living. For this reason, we have brains that reward us for problem solving. When you solve a puzzle endorphins are released, and if there's anything losing our virginity has taught us, we love endorphins*. Endorphins make you feel good. They give you the runner's high, the elation at the end of a great challenge won, the wonder of learning (and teaching), and the feeling you get when you hear a song that speaks to you. This is the song that you don't want to end; the one that you can't remember exactly until it starts playing, but you know you want to hear THAT one. Pachelbel's Canon in D was the first for me. I heard it on the classical music station when i was homeschooled in the 6th grade. I checked out the disc at the library and recorded it on a tape†; learned it on the violin and played the tape OVER and OVER again. It was a song that i couldn't figure out and that was so wondrous.

It is wondrous still.

*I see you like endorphins. I like endorphins too.
† i didn't know it at the time, but it was my parents' wedding tape. (oops!)

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