I am sure there is matter in this particular rantlet that will offend some people, without even getting into the topic of sex... (Andy Rooney voice) But I have gotten pretty tired of people talking about music and emotion to the exclusion of any other, possibly more crucial and important factors, and worst of all, pretty much blithely equating emotion and spirituality as if they were one and the same (end Andy Rooney). That there is a relationship I'll readily concede, as there is a relationship let's say between mechanical engineering and computer science. But one is not the other, and that's what we're going for here. If this bothers you, please head elsewhere NOW. Those who remain, thanks for listening...

That Emotion Is Second

Not that emotion can't be wonderful in its place, and not that the Beatles and Brian Wilson weren't masters of feeling it and conveying it. But hell, animals have emotion, rats have compassion, dogs have loyalty, and so on... there is more to the world than is dreamt of in emotionality, although it certainly cannot be proven in words to people who believe otherwise. The pervasiveness in the consensus reality of the notion that "emotion is the highest thing, that's the goal, what matters is how you feel" as an unstated assumption... well, it's a psychological cul de sac of the highest order. It is as if dogs were to assert that the highest form of perception is smell.

To choose an almost random, easily testable example, watch some sports interviews sometime. The best players are always those who have the strongest competitive emotions. When asked why they play, almost invariably it is for feelings: the feeling that accompanies winning, the feeling of being a part of a team. The latter is of interest- because even Western science has acknowledged that such a feeling, esprit de corps if you will, is easily engineered by having groups of people perform synchronized movements involving large muscles. It works for armies, for athletes, and for people engaged in supposedly spiritual pursuits- the literally mechanical engineering of emotion. It works no matter what people believe, no matter what their putative "cause" is. It works for two opposing teams, two opposing armies, two opposing religions. It seems to me that anything that can be arrived at by such methods simply cannot be the pinnacle, no matter HOW good it feels.

Like almost everything else, music can contain feeling, but also much more... though that is a rare notion to be sure, and very hard to separate out. If you follow the history of music, from its literal invention (or, shall we more accurately say, its codification and transformation from folk art to science) by Pythagoras, through the Arabian and Andalusian periods that formed the foundation of what we in the West now have... there was always something more implied. The problem is that finding that thing is blocked by the instinctive seeking of emotional satisfaction. I have no problem with people putting emotion into music- I do it elsewhere on this website- and no problem with people evaluating music on its emotional impact- I do it elsewhere on this website. I do feel, think, opine, and in my own pompous opinion believe that I know- that stopping there is closing Pandora's box a bit too soon, before letting out the final necessary ingredient.

New Bottles, Old Wine

Perhaps it's best explained by analogy. Lately there has been some sensationalist exploration of ancient Egypt onscreen on the Fox network. My 14 year old son has followed it with interest, and mentioned that some seer type predicted that some "magical objects" or somesuch were buried in this or that tomb or under the Sphinx. He posited that perhaps these objects could be found.

My response was along these lines: Perhaps such things exist, perhaps they do not. However, it would be extremely unlikely that they are still there, given that several great empires (every one that has ever been dominant, actually) have since occupied Egypt, and some of them (at least the Macedonian/Greek and Arabian empires in my opinion) must have had people who had notions about what such objects were and where to find them and how to use them.

Moreover, it is quite possible that such objects have already been found- but not identified as such. Given that people such as archeologists view things through the prism of functional science, and cultural biases about religion and art, how could they tell if an object had some special function or not? By appearance? Very doubtful. Such an object could look, for example, like a statue of a "god" or an ordinary household utensil of some sort. Bias would classify such things as parts of this or that religious ritual, or an expression of emotion in the form of art, or in a mundane utilitiarian fashion. The magical object would take its seat in a museum until the nukes fall, forever to be viewed as part of a fertility rite or whatever. Even if identified somehow, it seems extremely unlikely that the people who have access to such objects would be able to make them function. What, after all, would a Neanderthal do with an electric guitar if he found it and happened to figure out it was used to make some sort of noise (heavy metal excepted, thanks Mike)?

The point of the analogy is that we do the same thing with music- classify it according to how emotionally it moved us or expressed what the authors felt, evaluate its commercial success, and put it neatly labeled on shelves in our mental museums. If there is any hidden functional aspect to it, we do not perceive that, nor are we able to operate it. In at least some cases, though, I think it actually happens anyway... much the way, for example, you could cure a Neanderthal of a bacterial disease by slipping some antiobiotics into his mammoth stew. It would work despite the subject's ignorance.

I believe that to some extent, some popular music- indeed some of all art in all forms- contains a hidden ingredient that operates on a higher level than mere emotionality. That it actually changes the way people think, and influences them on a more subtle level than that of feeling, one they themselves do not perceive directly (or one they misinterpret due to a bias toward emotion). If you leave the original contents in the container, or you maintain some form of contact with the source of those contents, whether consciously or not- some of the original contents must remain, no matter how diluted by the addition of other things.

Back on the historical trail, music goes from Greece to Arabia, through them to Spain, and through Spain and the Troubadors and the sinking of the Armada to England, France and so on. A lot gets lost during that time frame, things get captured by Christianity and formalized by the rationalists... but I do think a diluted form of the original subtle content still comes through at times. At this point it should also be noted that Indian music with its ragas that so closely resemble Pythogorean modes, was almost certainly influenced by the Alexandrian and Arabian conquests of its north.

Common to the Greek, Andalusian, and Indian approaches is the idea that there should be a relationship between the choice of a mode or raga and the environment (time of day, season of year etc.) and the condition of the listeners. There are also extensive writings, although few are left and many are not available in translation, that attempt to "map" the use of this or that mode or raga to at least these two dimensions (time and people) and codify, predict, what the effect will be. I've found such in material by Plato, Zyri'ab, and Ravi Shankar; Greek, Andalusian and Indian respectively. In the hands of modern Westerners, this is almost a nonexistent idea beyond emotionalist dualist simplist major/minor, happy/sad. Scientists will admit we can't mummify creatures or preserve flowers the way the Egyptians did, or make Greek fire; perhaps we can't use music the way these supposedly more primitive people did, either.

In the cases, for example, of Lennon and Harrison of the Beatles, you have two musicians who worked fairly extensively with modal forms seriously influenced by very ancient cultures, in which music had a more subtle function, at least at times, than the expression and evocation of emotion. Much of Lennon's work, and Brian Wilson's for that matter, with the formal "deviations" from standard "pop" people have written so much about, would probably have sounded completely at home in the court of the Eastern Arabian Empire in Cordoba in the year 1000- or in ancient Greece, or India. At the time, for those of you still reading and keeping score so to speak, Christian Europe had no colleges or universities of any sort, and hygiene was completely unknown, just as a basis for comparison.

The elements, primarily in John's and Brian's work, that I would call of major interest along these lines would be:

Use of the VII chord

A general modal approach that mixes up scales that would traditionally be separated into major and minor

Use of ternary measures (three beats) as both the primary structure and interposed and interspersed with more standard four-beat rhythms

The "tinkly" sound where stringed instruments are plucked and doubled to make harpsichord-like sounds

"Love" poetry where the love object can easily, by poetic correspondence, be viewed as an analogy for the soul or the divine (a la the Troubadors; one could, for example, interpret the lyrics to the very Andalusian Norwegian Wood (or The Lonely Sea) as a record of a fleeting (or unconsummated) encounter with the divine element. This interpretation, since it is supportable from the text using standard accepted definitions of the words employed, remains valid no matter what the author intended or consciously wrote about; as Hermes Trismegistus so aptly put it: as above, so below)

Use of major and minor of the same chord in the same song

Nonverbal "scat" melisma

Use of "shocks" and sudden changes in tempo, weird noises etc.

There are probably more of these but that's all I can think of now. The best way to evaluate this idea is certainly to listen to that type of music, which can be found if you look for it... the Andalusian tradition is still going on, some of it in Spain by academic types, more in Morocco, Tunisia, and Algiers by folk practitioners (when the Christians took Spain, they expelled all the Arabs and Jews including most of the musicians).

The Truth Will Out

Environments can influence people in subtle ways.... Strawberry Fields was written in Spain, where the Andalusians once made great, sophisticated music. Some very wise people were living in London during the Beatles' heyday, at least one of whom met John Lennon very briefly. In the case of Brian Wilson, there's less of a historical record, and much muddling due to the side effects of both drugs and therapy... but there aren't many people who have really appreciated Brian's best music who have not arrived at the conclusion that some higher source of inspiration is involved; I'm just trying to sharpen the point that more than mere everyday emotion is involved in this process.

There is a notion, expressed often in acknowledged valid mystical literature, that wisdom always finds a channel, not necessarily one that is recognized as such by the recipients or even the channel itself. Just as one random example, consider the lyrics to "Incense and Peppermints" by the Strawberry Alarm Clock sometime. Think of what a Strawberry Alarm Clock would be... something that tastes sweet yet bitter, but wakes you up.

What is mere about emotion is that people's buttons are too easily pushed. The problem with firmware is that it's too firm. This is very easy to demonstrate:

"Hitler was a great man. He conquered an empire the size of Alexander's, motivated his people to great heights of emotional feeling, was a supporter of the Christian religion, developed mass communications to an extent unprecedented, and encouraged technological innovations including the jet airplane, the atomic bomb, and the rocket."

Almost everyone reading the above (in isolation) would assume that I am a Nazi and a white supremacist who wants to kill and/or perform perverse experiments on all sorts of people based on ethnic or racial characteristics. Nothing could be further from the truth (most of the time;-). I merely wrote the above to illustrate a point. But we have defined "greatness" in a subjective, emotional manner that includes some notion of "good" and applies to the late Joe DiMaggio and Stanley Kubrick. Even though the accomplishments of Hitler listed above are true, he cannot be "great" because he is also "evil" like Lee Harvey Oswald and John Wilkes Booth etc.

Now consider this:

"I am he as you are he as you are me and we are all together"

I believe that the above statement is objectively true on a more sophisticated level than that of emotion. On an emotional plane, it can be evoked by mere button pushing and activation of prejudices, whether at Woodstock, or a Nazi rally, or in support of the Pope in St. Louis, or at a Beatle concert. We are one, yes, all interconnected as part of one divine timeless reality, there is no doubt about it. However, realizing that fact and working with it is all too often hindered and not helped by emotion and also by intellect, which are too easily manipulated and act much more often to divide us than unite us.

You can certainly make a silk purse out of a sow's ear: all you need is silk, a needle, and technique (the sow's ear would function as the underlying, strengthening structural leather). Employ ordinary perceptions, manipulate your own emotions and those of others, learn some simple methodologies, you will more often than knot make money, win, be liked, whatever. It's legal and fulfilling in its own way and there's not a damn thing wrong with it as far as it goes.

What cannot be done is to make a silk ear out of a sow's purse: to achieve perception, or personal or collective unity, solely by means of the ego's (or, as Sufi tradition would better describe it, the Commanding Self's) gratification mechanisms of emotion and intellect. Living is, after all, easy with eyes closed.

Some at this point may think I am in way over my head (duh!), or grinding some emotional or ego-related axe of my own. Be that as it may, I personally believe I am presenting historically and psychologically valid information on a very basic level that the average person should have mastered by the time of high school graduation. The main reason it is not taught, I'd guess, is due to a combination of ignorance (it's not occurred to many people that this material exists or is important) and some darker motiviations: in that our religious, educational, governmental, and commercial establishments are in a state of near-total dependence on emotional engineering and cannot abide the possible loss of power and influence that divulging these ideas could cause. In this view I am joined, in both published material and private correspondence, by at least the noted author Doris Lessing, who has written about it better than I ever could in her "Prisons We Choose to Live Inside." As Paul McCartney said in another context, "Take a good look around you." And a word from George, too: "Think for yourself."