How music Shapes Your World
One of the happiest moments of my life dispersed into a fit of wild dancing in front of the Royal Exhibition building after a first date with my now partner. The night felt harsh and I would've draped my brown corduroy jacket over her. But as Elton John blasted through the speaker, the cold was the last thing on our minds.
A few days later during a coffee date, she rightly pointed out that my music taste "needed work" and curated an entire playlist titled Required Reading. The title, she thought, was the only way to break me out of my solipsistic taste and expand my obscure love into new genres. And like anyone who had read too much and spent way too much time around academics who wore "I don't listen to pop" as a badge of honour, I tucked the playlist away.
Upon closer inspection, music taste doesn't come from arbitrary preferences, and trying to change someone's music taste is harder than convincing my grandparents that ketchup on dumplings might be a good idea. In reality, taste is only the surface manifestation of what music truly underpins: history, identity and most importantly, mood.
The right music could crowd out the cold on a harsh night, and the wrong music could certainly be disturbing. Byung-Chul Han's untimely meditation on Good Entertainment started with a shocking moment on Good Friday. In 1727, Bach's Saint Matthew's Passion was performed in the Saint Thomas Church in Leipzig for the first time, causing total outrage and horror from the audience. Unlike traditional liturgical choir music, the piece sounded too theatrical and operatic, exciting passions instead of pious contemplation. As a result, the council cut Bach's wages after the performance because he failed to set the right "mood" for the service.
Historically, the Church proved to be a great contender in the battle of making-a-great-fuss-out-of-everything. But they were right to worry about Bach's theatrics. The wrong music, not just in church services, could throw off a whole situation and "kill the mood". In the Hall of the Mountain King could turn any serious moment into a farce. The Seinfeld theme music has the same effect on sex as having too much to drink before heading into the bedroom. The right music, however, could turn a simple train ride into the opening of a biopic and a casual night out into a montage from a coming-of-age novel. Good Music matters because it reveals that mood often comes before thinking and perception.
According to Martin Heidegger, before we could think or perceive an object, we first of all find ourselves in being-in-a-mood. Mood here is not a subjective state that rubs off on the objective world, but it filters everything we see. Someone who had a horrible night of sleep could find fault in a gourmet French dish, likewise, another person who didn't skip his morning coffee could remain calm and collected when he spots a flat tyre. Mood is more objective than objects because it primes how we see the world.
Whenever we want to improve ourselves, we like to focus on what we can do and what we can acquire. We focus on actions and objects while disregarding "mood" because it seems frivolous. However, investing time into curating a workspace, a playlist for jogging or the right wine for a calm evening isn't a waste. Setting the right mood is about curating the reality we want to live in instead of the one dictated to us. And through this logic, the fastest way to understand someone is to explore what primes their mood. In my case, I found my answers in that playlist I tucked away.
This happened on a scorching day at the Florentino cafe where none of the cafe patrons cared to sit outside on the terrace with me. The waiter kept filling up my water cup and reminded me to go to the toilet before boarding a tram. The heat made reading impossible, and I finally exhausted the novelty of listening to my old playlist. So I scrolled down and started getting curious: what mood do these songs place her in?
After three hours, I had listened to every piece from the playlist. Some of the songs spoke the thoughts she struggled to put into words for me, while the rest gave me unfiltered glimpses into her lust for life. During rare moments, I found myself in tears, thinking: what took me so long? I drained the last sip of my iced coffee, packed up and called her:
"I want to talk to you about your music..."
