jeru

A birdsong is a lovely thing to behold, not only, if taking the notes apart, do you get a melody with major and minor shifts, but also a key, but not only that, you have a lovesong, and this is all coming simply from springtime coming, and deep inside the bird, it wants to sing–and so it does. Different birds may sing in A, or C, there are even common themes, maybe some will be longer or shorter, some will repeat more, some will have more novelty, but they all tend to harmonize as they sing to each other–and yet, the music is there.

When humans speak, they also have a cadence, a flow, and a melody, complete with key, intonation, beginning, middle and end. When someone says something in an up-turned intonation, or when they say it quickly, or more slowly, it communicates something other than the meaning of the words, but a synthesis of expressions. Most people, just like the birds, also have their own variations on “common themes” in their expression of language–and yet, the music is there.

A song’s most common structure is in the form of maybe an intro, some verses, some choruses between, maybe a bridge and/or an outro. There is a cadence to it, with ups and downs, the intro sometimes very patient, or maybe rushed, the verse telling the tale while the chorus provides the theme, concept, or thesis of the song, with the bridge usually used as a commentary on another section. In a fantasy tale there is, of course, a beginning, middle, and end: the kingdom, the knight, and the princess are revealed, an evil wizard wreaks havok on the kingdom, and at the end the evil wizard is defeated, the knight is reunited with the princess, and the kingdom is safe again…

When someone is in need, or hurt, that is written on them, and seeing the writing resonates when we see that. A child could see something so simple and fundamental. An innate need runs through us for love and justice, sympathy and compassion, it binds us together, ultimately. A song about a failed relationship tugs at our hearts, a song about a wonderful person the artist admires tells us about the beauty of love, a story of daring and justice prevailing plays to our hope for the future, something with a heavy thumpy bass gets a crowd moving, a shrill altissimo on an alto saxophone pierces and shrieks, a violin weeps and weaves.

A song tells a story, and a song has its ups and downs, and its cadences with its own stories to tell in the melodies and harmonies, and a humanity runs through it all. A song of songs, an album, a song, a section–a story of stories, each within each other, a story has a tale of a prince saving a princess, with complicated rescue scenes, with a tale of a battle between good and evil, that has its own battles… An act has lines delivered within sections, within scenes, within sections, within films, plays, or performances. A book has words in sentences, within paragraphs, within sections, within chapters, within sections, within pages, within bindings, within books/volumes/collections. Tales of humankind and stories within stories, songs within songs, are expressed in logically coherent manners that are intended to be understood as having beginnings, middles, and endings, within beginnings, middles, and ends, notes within chords and melodies, melody within harmony, harmony within harmony, performers on certain instruments within performances, tone, tambre, arcs, cadence, major/minor, sustained/diminished, 7th, 9th, 5th 4th, 3rd–notes within sections within movements within works within collections or albums, all to show the beauty of love, life, experience, tales of bravery or beauty, ugliness, shame, pain, sorrow, happiness, joy, romance, delicacy, indiscipline, meditation, etc., etc., and these many stories and songs move within us and resonate with us and they can show us ourselves and help express our internal state or find enjoyment in merely the rhythm or melody, but these are languages within languages, songs within songs, stories within stories, memories within memories, thoughts within thoughts…

The natural state of mankind is not conflict, but yet, resolving as much conflict as is reasonable, or a state of flux between both, for lack of better terms, peace and conflict, conflict and peace. Balancing harmony and dissonance blesses us with insight into our lives and the world around us. May we receive these blessings.

Edit 2023-12-16: I’d like to tell the inspiration for the writing. I was walking outside, simply lost in thought, a hummingbird was flying toward me, I looked up and it was flying with another. Passing by, it chirped back and forth to and from the other bird, and the other bird said something, maybe “Come quick! Follow me!” I saw another bird, a sparrow, fly down and peck at something on the ground near some flora. I paused for a moment at the scene and considered what had just happened. The sparrow was chirping happily, pecking meanderingly, and another bird flew down. The songs of those four birds harmonized quite well, and I began to analyze the harmonies of all the other birds, amused atthe thought that birds sing to communicate.. Well, of course we know how birds communicate, and I have tried to communicate not only something beautiful, yet true and good. I am trying to tell something about the nature of song and story. I hope this makes sense here with these final two paragraphs, because without them, this would not be coherent.