Old songs

Yesterday I cautiously embarked upon that most worrisome of expeditions into the past: listening to an old favourite album.

First things first. I returned alive. The natives were restless; their incessant drumming was more foursquare than the old reports had suggested, and a great deal seemed a little repetitive, but no serious harm was done and nobody ended up in a pot.

Of more interest, why was this a dangerous expedition?

I’m tempted to think that it’s something to do with the time travel involved. By my best guess, it must be nearly 15 years since I last listened to this music (terrifyingly, the album itself is getting on for 20 years old). The past as a foreign country: I did things differently there. Perhaps listening to the soundtrack of me 15 years past I would be bringing back events, people, problems from the past. Endless hours locked into meaningless journeys with only a cheap blue plastic Walkman to provide a pretend overlay of meaning. A lanker, paler version of me occupying a lanker, paler world.

Alternatively, perhaps I would be overwhelmed by a sense of loss at those 15 years having whipped past like the tail of a kite, lively in the breeze, impossible to hold fast. Those old songs should bring back a younger, wiser me, less cluttered by the bricabrac of living, merrily cluttered with possibilities.

Was either of these true? Almost certainly both of them. And yet, and yet.

I think there’s something more visceral, something more universal to the listening of music once intimately known. I would rarely feel the same way rereading an old favourite book, or watching again one of the movies that meant so much to me in my film-a-day youth. These stand identifiably separate from you, no matter how closely you identify with them. They stand before your eyes. It does make a difference.

Music, that either most bastard or most perfected of the arts, insinuates itself in always from the sides. How can you trust it? It does not occupy your field of vision, it sits on your shoulder, passing constant comment on the world as it passes by. Devil and angel whispering in your ears, it colours everything, tints the very sky in its favoured colours.

Clever music, insinuating music, walks with you pretending to be your friend. As when re-opening an old friendship, you find yourself approaching cautiously, wondering silently just why it fell into abeyance in the first place.

The sensation of hearing those songs again is disruptive. It’s both familiar and strange. This is the excitement, and the fear.

I think there’s a pretty simple explanation. Much of musicality is prediction; like comedy, music satisfies by fulfilling expectations in often unexpected ways. The perfection of Bach is best appreciated when the listener is teetering on the edge of fully understanding the pattern. Things are clear without being obvious.

Old songs are obvious without being clear. You know moments perfectly, but can’t recall how the patterns go together. The moment one song finishes I know the opening of the next, but I don’t recognise the song itself for a while after. Everything is backwards. Songs are shorter than I recall, but the album longer. Worse. The songs are the same in their finest detail, but utterly different to their memory. It’s like waking up having fallen asleep on your arm. There is something there completely of you, but totally alien.

There’s something strange going on tonight. But I feel fine.