The mind works in mysterious ways, to state a commonplace observation. Every now and then, however, it can still be startling to discover particular instances of this. This evening produced a remarkable illustration.
We were enjoying our after-dinner game of Scrabble, and listening to music. The CD my wife chose is one I picked up a few years ago during a holiday in Italy. It is a collection of music by a local choir from the small town in Friuli where I was staying.* They are really rather good, and remarkable in that they are able to sing material not only in Italian and the local Friulian language but also in German, Slovene, French and English …. very versatile! Regularly I find that whenever they sing Lindenbaum I am almost moved to tears. (In fact, as often as not I am in tears, depending upon whether or not I am taken by surprise.)
Why this should be has mystified me for a long time, especially so because I don’t speak German. (Well: I have a little of what I call “railway German”.) Consulting a translation of the words of the song a little while ago didn’t really enlighten me. Was it a result of the specific harmonies of the arrangement? If so, why?
Tonight, however, quite suddenly I realised why my response might possibly be what it is. It has nothing to do directly with the music, but with what Stanislavsky called “emotional memory”, by which experiences are linked not rationally or obviously but indirectly, and through a common emotional charge.
The link is found in my experience of singing while in junior school in the small Lancashire town of Nelson. This was the only time in my school days when I actually enjoyed music lessons. Even today I can remember the words of several of the songs we sang then, such as Shenandoah and Blow the Man Down. A particular favourite of mine was the English folk song Linden Lea. The link is the lime tree. Mention of this triggers a flood of childhood associations, perhaps not always consciously brought to mind, but present in their emotional charge. The connection between them is by no means obvious, as Linden Lea is about personal freedom. The words of Wilhelm Muller (set to music by Franz Schubert) are enigmatic, but seem to me to be primarily about the power of memory. My mind makes an entirely personal and idiosyncratic association between the two songs that somehow manages to multiply the emotional power of both of them together.
I’m sure that this is all classic “right brain” stuff and the substance from which a good deal of art is made. If that is the case, then it is hardly surprising that viewers often find painting so difficult to understand, because the “grammar” by which the elements of a picture are organised is necessarily so very personal to the artist.
*This was during my period of collecting reference material for my Presente! project, the results of which are collected in one of my “galleries”.