Learn & Tell

Set the Gearshift: Phish as Catalyst to Ecstasy

Table of Contents

How does music move us to ecstasy? The answer is: Nobody knows. (And do we really need to know?) But, for the thinkers out there, here’s a possibility…

[Throughout this essay, titles of songs will be capitalized and in quotes (ie. “My Soul”). However, unless obviously intended as a reference to a song, these are meant to be read simply as words in the sentence.]

5. Emotion

As Liszt says, and Phish exemplifies, the “supremacy of music lies in pure flames of emotion” (Walker 137). An emotion, according to many psychologists, is simply motivation: anticipations and resolutions, expectations vs. reality. We go about our day subconsciously full of tiny expectations and anticipations. We expect things to go a certain way; when they do we are happy, when they don’t we are sad, angry, or frustrated. I wait for the bus with the expectation that it will arrive at 10:15. If it does, my anticipation is fulfilled and I am satisfied, a reaction that could also be called pleasure. If it does not, my expectation goes unfulfilled, a reaction that could also be called pain. Another example of a discrepancy that sparks an emotional response: if you hand me a bottle and tell me it is beer, but when I take a swig, I find it to be apple juice, my initial response is likely to be disgust, or confusion. As Jourdain says, “such discrepancies are believed to be the basis of emotion (from the Latin exmovere, to ‘move away’)” (311). AS we go through our day, “we experience a feeling of well-being when small positive emotional events occur continuously, and we become depressed or irritable when a train of small negative events accost us” (312). Being that these anticipations are mostly rapid and subconscious, we are not aware of them, only of the resultant emotion.

Within this theory of motivation, Phish cleverly mimics emotions by setting up anticipations and then satisfying them or dragging them out. Phish delights me with the “ingenious coordination of instrinsically pleasing sounds, their consonance and contrast, their flight and re-approach, their increasing and diminishing strength–this it is, which in free and unimpeded forms, presents itself to [my] mental vision” (Hanslick 66). Based on my cultural and personal experiences, I have been subconsciously trained to expect certain notes to follow each other. I expect rhythm to be constant, and am surprised when it is not, as in “First Tube.” As Hanslick says, “the other arts persuade us, but music takes us by surprise” (108), and “music operates on our emotional faculty with greater intenseness and rapidity than the product of any other art” (107). Phish’s intensity and rapid magic is similar to the rapid expectations going on subconsciously in my everyday life. Meyer agrees that these anticipations and surprises are what make music so powerful, saying “the music activates tendencies, inhibits them, and provides meaningful and relevant resolutions” (23). And remember that we each have our own definition of “meaningful and relevant resolutions,” which is why there are so many different types of music.

This theory of motivation, of anticipations and resolutions, doesn’t seem to address the problem of hearing a song more than once. Shouldn’t I, after already hearing and even memorizing “Chalkdust Torture,” know exactly what to expect? Shouldn’t I expect this rebellious composition’s devations automatically, thereby nullifying any effect it once had? My intuition tells me no, that every time I hear it, it is a joyful frenzy. Jourdain explains this by stating that “musical systems, including conventions of harmony and form, constantly reinstate standard expectations…no matter how many deviations we have previously encountered” (313). Because these anticipations are as lightning as my electrical impulses, and as hidden as my subconscious, they are constantly renewed, allowing pleasure even from oft-played tunes.

Having our anticipations fulfilled is a pleasurable experience, but deviations from our expectations is how Phish can really take hold of your soul, as a line from “Rift” says, “shocked and persuaded my soul to ignite.” (Along with musical deviations, Phish is famous for comical and silly deviations which make the crowd smile, such as when Fishman plays the vacuum, or when Mike and Trey bounce on trampolines). Top 40 and popular radio music is not known for its deviations, at least from unconventional deviations. This kind of canned music may be pleasurable because of its neat simplicity, and can move by resolving expectations quickly, but the most powerful music, that can move us to ecstasy, requires more than immediate gratification. As Meyer writes, summing up the quintessential jam:

If the musical patterns are less clear than expected, if there is confusion as to the relationship between melody and accompaniment, or if our expectations are continually mistaken or inhibited, then doubt and uncertainty as to the general significance, function, and outcome of the passage will result…[because] the mind rejects and reacts against such uncomfortable states and, if they are more than momentary, looks forward to and expects a return to the certainty of regularity and clarity” (26).

This lack of certainty, this “Bouncing Around the Room,” this tumbling, chaotic realm of the raging Phish jam makes the eventual cohesion that much more powerful and satisfying. Jourdain describes this effect by saying that music “can withhold its resolutions, and heighten anticipation by doing so, then to satisfy the anticipation in a great gush of resolution” (312).

Meyer calls this suspense “a product of ignorance as to the future course of events” (27), a “Fog that Surrounds.” In our ignorance of the future, Phish mimics life. Jourdain thinks that “the deepest pleasure in music comes with deviation from the expected: dissonance, syncopations, kinks in melodic contour, sudden booms and silences…[wherein] the deviations serve to set up an even stronger resolution,” and says that the best music “teases, repeatedly instigating an anticipation and hinting at its own satisfaction, sometimes swooping toward a resolution” (319). This is what the Phish jam does: teases, hints, turns, dives, swerves, accelerates, stops, and single notes sustained like the Millenium Falcon erupting from the imploding Death Star. Life is not as simple and straightforward as banal music would like to convey. Music like Phish that works with unconventional deviation relates the complexity of life much more realistically, and therefore emotionally, than simple tunes. Simple tunes have their place, but Jourdain rightly asserts that the art of music lies not in “devising resolutions, [but] in heightening anticipations to preternatural levels” (319), paralleling good music with good sex. The journey is the prize.

By “integrating many smaller anticipations into a towering hierarchy” (Jourdain 319), Phish builds up such a huge desire for completion that when they finally bring the jam back into our atmosphere, the climax can “Catapult” my emotions into a state of rapture. At this peak, the word “beautiful” pops from my mouth. But what is beauty? To continue our exploration of music, we must define beauty. How does the stimulation of the emotions reveal the beautiful in our mind’s eye?

NEXT: Part VI - Beauty