The Sound of Music

It was yet another of those solitary nights – one of the gloomier ones when I walked slow, sans purpose or thought – but it wasn’t a quiet time. Unlike my surround that night which was still except for the scratching sound of a stray dog far too busy rummaging through garbage to mind me, my insides were agitated, flinching at the prospect of thoughts that were plummeting towards me. Questions I had hurled at the universe had chosen to boomerang back towards me, promising to put me into that seemingly endless abyss of pointless brooding.

I decided to stab the mood in the back – to busy myself in finding out where this thought train sprang from – and arrived at the answer before I could arrive at the road crossing I was heading for. It was a simple question a friend had asked earlier that day at a cinema – why are our days, our lives so dull?

My mind went back to the movie we had been watching – do we need edge-of-the seat stunt sequences? A terrible, dark arch enemy with a horrifying motive who sits all day planning our end? Nail biting twists at the possibility of anything good happening? Or a clingy love interest who’d push me to be a better version of myself. Well, I’d be lying to myself if I think I’d say no to a little romance, but, no, honestly, I’d love to pass on all the drama, for peace does indeed lie in the simplicity of everyday things, but the question remained.

I plugged my beloved earphones into my itching ears and played my favourite background score by Hans Zimmer. It was “Imagine the Fire” from “The Dark Knight” from Nolan's Batman trilogy. It is said that walls at least 17 metres apart, within a closed region are required for the human ear to discern an echo, but even through the distance between my head and feet wasn’t even half that number, my whole body was suddenly shaking in inspiration from the echoes that spoke volumes of the greatness of this cowled, dark, brooding fictional character. And somehow, perhaps since the music was being played for just me, I sort of identified with him. Suddenly, all that mattered was that I was in action. My pace quickened. My feet, longer craving to get to my destination, took a longer route, just so that I could uninterruptedly continue to listen till the track ended.  And then it hit me. What was lacking from life, what filled the dullness of life was the lack of music. That’s what we need more of. A background score. Or, like the Indian films, at least a song now and then to distract us, to lose ourselves in.

As I took off my earphones, I started wondering as to what role music truly played in our lives. From greeting us with familiarity in an alien place, to forging relationships, why, to even calming our temper when we’re waiting for an agent to pick our call, it was all music, single handedly holding onto the ropes of our emotions. Why, even newborn children unanimously fall asleep when they listened to a lullaby!

I had read of people’s heartbeats synchronising with the beats of a tune while they listen to it. It all seemed very poetic, and perhaps even had some scientific backing to it, behind all the pseudoscience that it smelled of, but that wasn’t what I was looking for. I was looking to see the effect of a tune on a mind. I thought of how a simple tune could take one back to their childhood, or bring back the memory of a loved one. Of how a mere sound could invoke in one, fervent devotion to an unseen deity. It was both strange and beautiful. How could beats from a percussion instrument inspire one into action, and how could the melody of a flute subject a formless soul to a soothing ache, even move someone to tears? How could some beats push a person to stand up and dance? Or at least nod in phase with it? How could some tunes aggravate/intensify passion? How could it light up the eyes of lovers looking at each other? How could simple notes make one relive and forget pain? How could the simple pursing of strings play with the very fabric of time that wraps around all that we know – the personal time that we are all prisoners of? All this achieved by a collection of frequencies that can be generated by the simplest among us?

Perhaps science fuelled by mathematics wasn’t the way here. Perhaps, like the scale of quantum and the scale of relativity, the human emotional realm was yet another phase where the physics of common sense – in this case, perhaps physics itself, as we’ve known it, ceased to exist. Perhaps dry philosophy littered with pseudo-jargon terminology was indeed the way to go. Even if it wasn’t, something told me that subjecting surreal music, this apparent engine of life, to the mundaneness of blind math was a blasphemous disrespect its sanctity. Perhaps leaving it unanalysed and to treating it the way it has always been, with the occasional stare of wonder, of awe, was a means of worshipping its grandeur.

And so I let go of the compulsive instinct to subject this phenomenon to the microscope of cold logic, and decided to immerse myself into the positivity it radiated. And then science swam towards me, picking me up in all its warmth and holding me in a tight embrace. I felt the thrill that filled me, with the Lagrangian method of swimming with a tune, and the fulfilment I had, when, like the Eulerian approach, I lay back and let the tune slide across my soul. I witnessed interference of waves, forming crests that lifted my spirits and troughs that held me tight. And Doppler’s effect when listening to “Yeh Dil Deewana” on a long drive. It was liberating beyond any words could explain.

Perhaps we are all like Captain Von Trapp from The Sound of Music who need to evolve from whistlers to the singers we were born as. And perhaps we can grow with the nourishment of music. Perhaps we needn’t find out this way. Perhaps all that was needed was to give in and let the tune take care. What could be better?