Music

Occasionally I meet a piece of music that I wish I had written. It's never anything deep or meaningful. It's never music that will make a "Top 100 Pieces of Music Since the Beginning of Time" list or anything. It's usually a pop song. Because I'm simple that way.

I'm an extremely lazy person, so unless a particularly excellent piece of non-commercial music is put under my nose by one of my friends (or by a helpful dj or website), I'm not going to actively go and seek out said music. Looking for cool and interesting music smacks of effort, and I'm not a big fan of effort.

I'm not like most of my ex-boyfriends who had insane record collections that contained stuff like a rare album that was only released in its entirety in Japan, while in the rest of the world three tracks were missing and one track lacked an interesting drum arrangement. I don't do that. Because tracking down the Japanese release of a stupid drum solo sounds like effort for no good reason. An audiophile I am not.

But I like music. I really do. And I like a variety of genres. I like classical and classic rock. I like blues and soul. I like hip hop and R&B. I even like, *gasp*, country music. And I really, really like commercial pap.

Usually I just listen to a tune and enjoy it and then don't think about it anymore. But sometimes, sometimes, I hear a tune that is so interesting that I keep listening to it over and over again. It stays in my brain and talks to a part of it that normally only gets reached by actively doing math and physics, and by programming.

Ok, before you stop reading and say, "Oh great, egghead talk. I'm tuning out now," or, "Man, does this chick have to rub in the fact that she used to be a science student before she realized that she sucked ass at it and dropped it all to pursue an electrifying career as a waitress," I would like to just say that music, math, physics and programming are a lot more similar than most people on sitcoms would think.

No offense to sitcom characters. I like sitcoms.

The thing about the tunes that stick in my brain is that they have particularly interesting structures. I'm not musically trained (heck, I'm tone deaf), but I can see (hear?) the structure in the music: the way one instrument cues into the other, the way the harmonies are arranged and the way the tempo changes. I can't keep the beat, nor can I hear the "notes between the notes," but I can see the pieces of the music fit together. But only when the music is sufficiently complex. Or not complex. Or something. I don't know how my brain works, and it's really not inclined to tell me, so I can't really tell you why some music hits me and some doesn't. But I know that when it does, it feels like when I've hit a sweet spot while programming or solving some math problem.

It's hard to explain the feeling. I think it comes with the synesthesia that causes me to see coloured letters and numbers. It's a long story. It's the feeling that everything fits together just right. If you've ever programmed, you know that sometimes you figure out a really simple, elegant way of doing what you need to do. You write modules and functions that do exactly what you want them to do, in a way that's simple and easy-to-understand. You look at the code and you say, "Wow. That's just beautiful," and then you show it to your friends. It's like all the pieces fit together just right and each piece is as perfect as it could be. And as you're writing this code, you become entranced and you can see and hear what you're writing. It sings to you. It's a beautiful experience.

Similarly, when you're trying to prove some physics or math theorem, you'll struggle and struggle and then, suddenly, you think of a different approach and start solving/expanding your equations and the system of equations starts to direct you to the conclusion. You are just the vehicle. The system of equations solves itself. You hear nothing around you. You feel nothing around you. All you hear and see are the equations. Myself, I used to hear my equations talk to me and slowly change colour. I knew I was going in the right direction because the colour changes made sense. It's like a trance. It's just you and that theorem and nothing else. And when it's done, you're like, "Wow. I wanna do that again!"

And sometimes I get that with pieces of music. I listen and relisten to the music and hear different nuances and feel the way all the pieces fit together. The only problem with the music is that I didn't compose it myself. I'm merely an observer, enjoying the handiwork of someone else. And that's when I wish I had written the music myself.