Music.

I’ve been steeped in music for 64 years now but recently I’ve been upscaling my education. I can now make faces go pale with confusion in seconds. Two amazing things. One there’s only 12 notes in an octave and a realistic range of around 60 to 140 beats per minute: that’s it. And two, people who know nothing about music can be moved to tears, remember a host of songs, when they heard them and what they mean to them. I guess it’s only like watching TV and not knowing how it works but then there’s a whole pantheon of music from classical to jazz to pop. Another obvious but amazing thing is you can’t stop sound and look at it like a picture. Stop it and there’s nothing. In a way that’s quite rare. Stop a chair, it’s still there, a tree and it’s still there. The nearest I can think of is strangling a chicken: one moment it’s there, the next it’s stopped, visible but lifeless, which I guess puts music in the same category as life. (But then in music a guitarist will soon start up twiddling again) Another strange thing is when the bass player stops the whole band tends to stop. Vocals, guitar even drums can stop no problem, but the bass? Why? And Joni Mitchel. Men, even jazz players only use ‘sus’ (suspended) chords in passing. “Never go from a sus chord to a sus chord”. Then Joni comes along and she’s sus to sus to sus. Sus chords are emotionally unresolved and men can’t cope with that, whereas Joni, who’s emotions were permanently unresolved, rarely needed to go to a major for comfort. Hence in Love Actually Joni taught Emma Thompson “how to feel.” And just like Emma thousands of women felt the same not knowing anything about sus chords. Jazz players play 2-5-1 chords incessantly because they sound cool and are real easy to riff over. “Nice.” When the director first heard the composer play the Jaws music he said, “Is that it!?” Which of course it was. And pop? Suffice to say it’s got so generic there’s now a whole industry suing people for infringement of copyright. Anyway hopefully I’ve not made your face go pale. And yesterday Ennio Morricone died. I bet you can’t picture Clint Eastwood without hearing his music.