What is it to Play a Song?

What is it to play a song? 

 

Does the song still exist when it is not being played? 

 

A song exists as a poem of lyrics on a page.

 

It exists as a tune stuck in your mind, silent to the outside world (unless you can’t help but hum it out loud).

 

It exists as a fragment of media, a track on a CD, a memory on a cassette tape, a set of dedicated grooves on a black vinyl LP.

 

The song exists as an experience, a memory, an evocateur.  

 

You remember the first time you heard it. Or, you remember the time in your life when you loved it dearly, when you couldn’t get enough of that song, when you lit up with excitement anytime it came on the radio, when you nearly exploded when you saw it performed live in a concert. Who you were with, what your life was about, what you liked to wear, what you liked to do, all come back to your mind when you hear that song.

 

Without the song, the memories might never again have been triggered. 

 

The song is a buoy on a lobster trap in the ocean. A little colorful bobbing thing with an invisible tether going deep. Pull on the tether and you find it is attached by a strong rope to a sunken cage, which may or may not have anything in it. 

 

That song was the soundtrack to your hippie days, the soundtrack to your first year of college, the soundtrack to your first job, the soundtrack to your first kiss. Hear it and the essence of the memory flows through you.

 

With that song playing, on the radio or even just in your head, you are connected to the you that has lived already, the you that once was there and now is here. 

 

You are reminded of the continuity. It is still you, after all. 

 

What is it to play a song? Do you know how you want to begin it? Or do you just want it to be rolling along already? Do you want to steer it, commandeer it, or do you want it to take you on a ride of its own? Do you lose yourself in it, become its spokesperson, its voice, its vehicle? 

 

You loan yourself to the song. You loan to it the fact that your voice can sing words and your hands can play notes. You are physicality, and one who has learned to do these remarkable things.

 

The song comes to life through you. Without you, the song is a fact maybe, but it is ethereal. Untouchable. A record of events at best, but in no way an event in and of itself.

 

You play the song and it is now an event. It is happening now. A lullaby is lulling, a love song is making heartblood flow more emphatically, a ballad is creating a movie in this very room. 

 

What is it to play a song? It’s an agreement with the art form. The song is disappointed if you stop in the middle. It is disappointed if you only learn to play a little bit of it. 

 

You learn a little intro riff and you play that riff over and over. What you may not realize is that, as far as the song is concerned, you are ringing its doorbell incessantly. You are calling it to come meet you over and over, and then saying, oh, never mind. 

 

The song wants you to learn it, start to finish. It wants a chance to come dance around the room for a few minutes. It needs you to animate it. As you animate it, you are in a symbiotic relationship. 

 

The song shines and you shine and you are both something you could not be without one another. 

 

©Lisa McCormick

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