Final Post

Original blog post:

This song reminded me of Schopenhauer’s idea of human will and reveals how dominating desire can be. It’s interesting because music to Schopenhauer is the only thing that can quiet our desires and insatiable need to feel satisfied while this song, thus music concerns itself so much with the feeling of yearning. So, I chose this song because I think it offers at least a superficial paradox following the perspective of Schopenhauer. However, I then come to realize that while the song concerns itself with expressing this desire for another particular being, that doesn’t mean that it doesn’t still create this transcendental moment where it is rather the idea of companionship created by the Will that the listener then experiences. If that makes sense. In writing this, I now also question whether or not Schopenhauer in his work referring to the effect of music is referring to the experience of listening to music, of creating music or most probably music in or in itself.

Expanded post:

In a way this song is ironic in that though it presents a very clear message of devoted yearning in its lyrics, it is rather the ineffable feeling the song creates separate from that explicit expression that gives it its value. The lyrics are minimal and poignant due to the fact that they aren’t overcomplicated or suffocated by unnecessary details. So, rather than anchoring the listener to the realm of the particular, the lyrics begin to express wanting in its essence. This music connects the listener to the pain of unrequited infatuation while at the same time making this pain remote by expressing it in itself instead of the phenomenon it produces and one which we feel as willing beings.

Schopenhauer says that through aesthetic contemplation, one may escape the unending cycle of satisfaction and dissatisfaction and grasp a glimpse of the supposedly unknowable noumenal world. It is then where life becomes livable by giving it significance. However music, according to Schopenhauer, is the only art form that is a direct copy of the Will without imitation or representation. In this way, it expresses the ineffable and its value comes from allowing us to connect to that which we know so inherently yet privately. Finally hearing it expressed yet still uncorrupted from the layers of senseless sensationalism brings us closer to our selves the phenomenal world as distracted us from. It is a kind of intimacy that music creates for its listener and even despite this particular song’s call to revert to the eternally willing individual, the power of music transcends this and touches an innate part of the listener.

There is a dearness to not having to say something but for everyone to know, a community is built between the spaces of the lyrics. Power broods in what can’t be said because this thing goes beyond the phenomenal reality in which world of words was created. All that evades representation is what creates and guides all representations and all that evades representation is called the Will. Music does not undermine the Will by attempting to represent it but rather briefly lifts the curtain up for the listener to recognize the world in itself.

This song though seemingly calling the listener to feel the distaste of wanting but not having, due to its minimalism in melody and voice instead offers the concentrated listener a glimpse of the feeling itself, in its purity and poignancy. Rather than diluting the melody and lyrics with ornamentation, the song does not hide from the experience of pain and in doing so, makes that pain almost pleasurable by connecting it to the Will.