I believe that the term ‘thin places’, referring to where the gap between the human and spiritual worlds narrows, can also be applied to music. In my opinion, music has the ability to offer that same liminal, out-of-body, mysterious feeling that can sometimes arise from certain environments, views, locations, etc. I believe that the approach of considering music to be an environment is a useful one here and generally- if you choose to listen to lots of a certain type of music and then change to another, its peaks and troughs, its highs and lows and the moods associated with its elements can feel like travelling through a physical environment, hence the common metaphors associated with music such as ‘journey’ and other aforementioned examples. Of course, which/what type of place or music would have this effect would vary from person to person, depending on their individual experiences. These would determine whether they had encountered another example like it before and therefore if it had specific nostalgic connotations or was impactful due to its novelty, perhaps being the fulfilment of a dream to encounter such a thing. The effect of such an experience can vary too, again perhaps depending on the current life situation, general mood, etc. It could make you feel hopeful, sad, aware of your own mortality, in awe, elated, numinous and so on.
The reason I got thinking about these ideas is that I went through a period of change myself, along with all of humanity, during the Covid-19 pandemic. I moved away from people and places that I loved, being pulled in all directions as my life appeared to go backwards while the world stood still and yet time continued to roll relentlessly on. I was staying in the house that used to belong to my late grandparents, my worldly possessions, and the remnants of theirs, hidden away in boxes in corners of a quiet building once so full of life. Just a glimpse of a quiet country lane and only a couple of distant houses are visible from the rear of the property, the view instead dominated by a large field with trees at the far end and a vast sky above. In the evenings, as spring 2020 slowly but surely became summer, I would go into the westward-facing garden and look over the fields beyond. Without setting out to create anything clichéd or contrived, merely wanting some music (that eternal beacon of light in an often-dark world), I began a playlist on my phone. With live birdsong and insect accompaniment, as nature carried on unaware of our human struggles, I casually selected some tracks I knew I loved and pressed play. As the sun sank towards the horizon, I stood with a drink and watched and cried as a red kite soared in circles high overhead, a winged guardian looking down. On other evenings, I climbed the boundary oak that gave that old house its name, or sat on the roof of the shed full of long-forgotten things, not touched or used for years; in all of these times, the music played and I listened.
Over the course of the year, I added more tracks as I heard them, often coming from TV shows I’d watched a thousand times but whose music I had never focused on before, sometimes having to dig around similarly quiet corners of the internet to find a title or artist name. During the days at this time, I was busy trying to finish my MA, writing a piece for orchestra entitled Delta ∆δ, itself exploring ideas of change, while in the background, the television churned out incomprehensible case and death numbers. Later in the days as the sky changed colour, I could think about gently closing my laptop and opening that beer I knew was downstairs in the fridge, perhaps one I’d been saving for a Friday. It was during these evenings that I considered what was happening to me and to the world, both on that day and over the weeks and months either side. I learned to be grateful for the good, to process the bad, and to be content in solitude; there is undeniably something common to all the pieces I chose, as musically eclectic as they are, that helped with this. Whether they would help others with something similar, or if someone else with entirely different experiences would (if they were to do something like this at all) choose different pieces is hard to say- I suspect it is not as black and white as that and in fact listening to the tracks I chose would have some similar emotional impact for some and not others, and that most likely, a seemingly infinite and unknowable set of other pieces in endless combination would suit millions of others in different ways. All I know for sure is that I keep coming across pieces that just click- I hear them and I have come to instantly know when they should be added to the playlist. Although I then sometimes find myself imagining hypothetical future instances and situations where I might put it on, it hasn’t yet lessened the impact, nor the natural way I seem to reach for it when the times come. My hope is that it will continue to grow and be the soundtrack to many more timeless moments of reflection and reverie, helping me through the bad and accompanying the good. Importantly however, what the process has done is show not the almighty effect of this particular curation of pieces, but of the power music has generally; it truly can be a panacea, a friend, a thin place. (NB: I am fully aware of the problematic nature of such streaming services in terms of earnings per stream for artists, despite it being a useful tool. I try, and would encourage others to as well, to purchase tickets/lessons/scores/tracks direct from artists or from ethical platforms where possible).