Changing My Interpretation

I have my moments, lost in myself, when I find myself absentmindedly singing along to whatever pops into my head. More often than not, this will result in such a song being completely stuck in a loop for long periods. The mood of these songs is often indicative of the state of my wider wellbeing, providing solace in their lyrics and in the music underpinning. There are also several old favourites, those which go in cycles, that will forever be the ‘sing along to in the shower’ material.

All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

Lots of chocolate for me to eat
Lots of coal makin’ lots of heat
Warm face, warm hands, warm feet
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

…

Someone’s head restin’ on my knee
Warm and tender as he can be
Who takes good care of me
Oh, wouldn’t it be loverly?

‘Wouldn’t it be Loverly’ from ‘My Fair Lady’ by Alan Jay Lerner and Frederick Loewe

These are songs which I’ve known forever; as time goes by, however, they take on a wider meaning. This changing interpretation often comes from a change in the context: a change in to whom I’m mentally singing, a change in the feelings which surfaced it in my brain, a fundamental failure of confidence which needs working through. At the moment, the mixtape is stuck somewhere between ‘wistfulness’ and ‘hopeless romantic’. This is no surprise, and there’s a form of catharsis which results from having something else to focus on. The dream for ‘a room somewhere’, with everything taken care of, is as powerful an image now as it was for the Victorian flower girl of ‘Pygmalion’; we all strive in our way to find our place of respite from the world and from ourselves.

In my life
There are so many questions and answers
That somehow seem wrong
In my life
There are times when I catch in the silence
The sigh of a faraway song
And it sings
Of a world that I long to see
Out of reach,
Just a whisper away
Waiting for me

‘In My Life’¹ — Les Misèrables

There are very personal reasons why this is simultaneously the music of my despair and my hope. It provides a grounding, an interpretative basis, a companionship for the maddening chaos of humanity. When we ask all the wrong questions, the unhelpful questions, the questions which seem to be apposite in the moment but miss the point, there is often a message to be found in the words of others answering the questions we should instead be asking.

At a Passover Seder, it is traditional for a child to ask four questions which lead to the recounting of the story of the passage of Moses out of Egypt. The first of these questions, “Why is tonight not like other nights?”, has stuck with me; when everything seems lost in the dark of the night, it can help to ask critically whether it is any different then to at any other time. More often than not, some forced perspective is all we need.

Drop Thy still dews of quietness,
Till all our strivings cease;
Take from our souls the strain and stress,
And let our ordered lives confess
The beauty of Thy peace,
The beauty of Thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
Thy coolness and Thy balm;
Let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
Speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm,
O still, small voice of calm.

‘Dear Lord and Father of Mankind’

As humans, we seek the small voice of calm in lives which are otherwise fraught and hectic. To err is to be human, but to seek peace is to attempt to move on from our errors. Whether through music, literature, work, or something else entirely, we all seek to find a way to change our interpretation of our world from the insular view of our own perception to something in context of the human experience. We cannot see through another’s eyes, but we can start to understand as our experiences correlate.