Of leitmotifs

I miss catchy themes in recent entertainment industry. As far as I can tell, the latest truly memorable themes have been in the early Harry Potter movies, the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and the first and second Pirates of the Caribbean movies. That's some early 00s stuff, and I can't remember many more since then. Only now and then there are some movies with one or other melodical soundtracks, but overall I feel there's been no real effort bringing songs that make you hum around for days.

I even started to think that perhaps the audience doesn't actually want it anymore. Maybe everybody got sick of it. But then HBO released Game of Thrones and now I know that's bullshit. The opening theme of this series is simple and catchy, and, as far as I can see, everybody seems excited about it. It's been really a while since I've seen people reimagining songs through metal and violin and 8bit versions, or even mashups of all these versions altogether.

I hear the leitmotif technique roots from opera composer Richard Wagner, which must set John Williams as a Wagnerian composer, then, because leitmotifing is just what makes him one of my favorite composers of all time, as he has an astounding ability to craft memorable themes for every single thing, and using these themes in critical moments to keep the audience under his spell. Star Wars is one of my all-time favorite series exactly because of that, the masterful use of leitmotifs by John Williams. Also lightsabers and awesome starships, of course. But the gentle whisper of the theme of the Force can send a chill down the spine of someone who's aknowledged with its meaning. For example, there's a scene in episode IV when Luke watches the binary sunset and thinks that there might more to his life than working in that farm in the middle of nowhere. Oh wait, you don't really know what he thinks, you only listen to that melody, and you can understand the character through it. And boy, what a great scene it is exactly because of that. You can show a lot through music, things that don't need to be told with actual words. Show, don't tell, the axiom of art.

And you don't have to have a movie or a game or a play to make use of musical themes. One of the greatest accomplishments in the using of themes that I can tell lies in the album Remedy Lane, by Pain of Salvation. There you find a love song, This Heart of Mine, with a very clear melody in its later chorus. And after that you have a depressive, melancholic song called Undertow. When the instrumental section of this song starts, if you pay attention, you can recognize that love theme, though brutaly distorted. It's all about this little melody played with a lot of tremolo-ing. The greatest thing about it is that you don't really need this logical analysis to understand the pain it conveys.

So that's why I really miss musicians exploring all the possibilities that music themes can have. The using of easily recognizable melodies as a symbolization of characters, places, events, feelings, ideas, or just anything, should be a technique of utmost importance for any storyteller.

Come to think of it, I have themes of my own. They're what I've been calling Hymns. Let me see if I can explore all the possilibilities that music themes can have.

Of Mindscapes

As a Taster, sensory feelings are everything for me. Smells and colors and sounds and flavors and textures are part of what my life is, especially because sometimes the combination of them creates a whole meaningful and memorable scenarios, despite of their usual fugacity.

Those are mindscapes, sensory feelings that combined stick to our memories. We all have lots of mindscapes in all our minds, ranging from all kind of experiences. That sunset hour plus her perfume. The foggy night plus a black metal song. That smell of coffee and plants in grandma's house.

I guess mindscapes are part of the whole personal element study. They can add so much to one's perception that I have this life goal that is to taste as many mindscapes as I can, be it through living my life or tasting other life stories (and clearly this has enormous story-telling potential).

It's weird to think there are people who have experienced mindscapes I could never dream of. It's quite interesting to try thinking of them, to broad my horizons. It's also helpful to realize some of my most influential mindscapes can be completely unknown or uninfluential to others.

I like living in this small city surrounded by nature. Mountains and valleys and forests. Now here's a cold and cloudy day. And I've got a hymn for this mindscape. I mean, there's quite a lot of them. There's so many of these heavy atmospheric, melancholic (sometimes with a hint of anguish)-sounding songs that I had to name them, Sunday Gray (i know, these names embarrass me, but a name is a name). So far the list includes: Alice in Chains' Bleed the Freak, Pearl Jam's Black, Acid Bath's Venus Blue, Metallica's My Friend of Misery, and, currently the most meaningful one, Pantera's Floods (especially that sweet outro, but that's quite because of another mindscape).
This whole mindscape actually reminds me of the city I grew in, which sometimes used to feel this beautifully sad and melancholic in days like this. Hey, umm, all these songs were released in 90s, the decade I lived there. Also, my brother did use to listen to a lot of grunge and thrash metal back then. Probably there's a Nirvana song that'll fit in this list (oh, it's quite frustrating to realize it's just a nostalgia-indulced feeling). So this whole Gray mindscape is indeed one of my strongest ones, and it has even influenced my musical taste. Quite deeply, I'd say, for this mindscape could pretty much even be the reason I love so much baritones vocalists and low-sounding instruments like bass and cello.

Of Contrasting

I've been talking a lot about them Hymns, but sometimes a bond between me and the song sometimes are unclear to me until a moment of great realization.

One of these days I was in the line at the market, and there were some random songs playing in my music player. I was just distracting myself with all these colorful candies tempting us in the line when a song from the Silent Hill 2 soundtrack started playing. Suddenly I felt kinda... naked and exposed, like I was doing something extremely private and intimate in public (no, I wasn't feeling like jerking off).

That feeling was just too weird, and I felt extremely compelled to analyse it. It wasn't hard to find the answer: I usually listen to that soundtrack in moments of deep introspection, when I'm all alone in my room, all lights out. Sometimes watching the world outside, or staring at the roof. And that connection, it seems to happen naturally. Maybe the songs make me feel like introspecting, or maybe I feel in a mood to listen to them when I'm already being introspective. I don't know for certain, but that's of least importance.

Anyway, now i've been thinking... if this contrast allowed me to recognize this hymn, then shouldn't I be able to optimize this process, to optimitze realization through contrasting?

Of autumn

I'm not that kind of person who's got a set choice to define things I like, but I can't help it:
out of the available seasons, Autumn is by far my favorite one.

It's something in the air. The way it teases my skin with its slightly cold breeze. or maybe it's something about the air itself. The way it does something to all the colors displayed around, making them match everything else so perfectly, and I could go on describing these combinations for hours.
It's like the world just decided to go poetic.

There's something about this season that makes me feel and see the world in a different way. I feel much more sensitive, much more inspired. It's the season I feel most connected to nature. I can't think of autumn without thinking of the trees and the sky. Greens and blues, whites and browns, all shades of sky colors.
Come to think of it, most of my favorite memories are related to autumn. They've probably grown on me because of the city I grew up in which used to be a quite cold city for the country's standards. Autumn reminds me of a magic childhood, of the seas of pine trees, endless blue, melancholic skies and chilly winds.
Mornings and evenings feel different to me in autumn time. I like the smell of oven smoke in a post-sunset purple-like sky. Or the coldness early in the morning, when the lawn is starting to dawn freezed and when you start noticing that steam of vapor flowing from your mouth. Yeah, ok, that's quite winter. I actually like autumn pretty much for it being some sort of a softer winter. And a more sober spring.

It's autumn here, right now. I can feel it.
I keep listening to Mostly Autumn continuously for no end for no other reason. The thing is, I do that pretty much unconsciously. I barely listen to them outside this season, but when it comes over, it's not like a tradition, it just happens naturally. There's a true bond in there. I can't tell of a song by them to become a hymn, because it seems some songs reminds me of a different aspect of autumn. Carpe Diem reminds me of melancholic post-sunset settings. Bitterness Burnt reminds me of hotter autumn days, around midday. The Night Sky reminds of, well, an autumn-ish night sky. No, the band itself is my hymn to autumn.

Of Safe Port

I'm not easily affected by sadness. In fact, I know how to enjoy it. Being sad is always a trip to knowledge. Of course it's risky (and nothing is rewarding without it). Thing is, while I have control of my melancholy, I'm making good of use of it.

However, there are moments when I go too deep and the door behind me is closed with an ominous sound. And I find myself unable to find the way back. I start getting scared. Nightmarish thoughts start lurking over. Thoughts too dangerous I can't possibly make a fight. Just twice I've let myself be haunted by the most terrifying thought I could ever think of.And there was nothing I seemed to do against it, as it gained control over my own will and I was left to stare blankly at the destruction I stupidly allowed to happen.
And then these little things I could cling to suddenly becomes either meaningless or unreachable. You know, like trying to make a climb but find every gripable thing to suddenly having become too loose to be trusted.

I need to find real Safe Ports for these situations, when I'm finding myself too hopeless.
I have some potential candidates for this. Sometimes a good bath does the trick. Sometimes listening to some funny guys talking shit to each other and laughing in some podcast a few clicks away can bring me to a good mood in the blink of an eye. But then again, as the despair gains command of my own will, I don't feel like doing things that'll do me any good. I guess some things are not meaningful or tangible enough to resist the pressure.

But I seem to have found my most precious treasure. I always enjoy listening to this band, Veszprémer Klezmer Band. It's a hungarian band that plays some sort of jewish party music. They've got some of the most cheerful songs I've ever known. Even their most melancholic tunes sound so ... harmless. I've grown to enjoy them so much I can't listen to them without feeling like smiling anymore. There's even this song where you can listen  to people (apparently in a bar), dancing, clapping, laughing. And seeing people being nice, having fun, being happy, hell, just thinking about it right now is making my eyes burn.
I can't listen to them without feeling like being constantly taught to always see the bright side of life. Hell, they're jewish, after all. These guys could be mourning over all the suffering their people went through. How can they make songs this beautiful? I can't help it, this album, Zajt Gezunt, is rapidly becoming my hymn to happiness.
Taking in account a Hymn gains strenght through practice, I'll have to be careful not to contaminate the songs with the hopelessness I'm in when I need to listen to them.
But they seem unable to fail. Here I am, listening to them, just filled with life again.

Damn, I've got tears bursting through.These are some thoughts I have to avoid when I'm on the bus.