"....there isn't really anything to say about the music, no, there's only the feeling it leaves inside ... and when it comes to music she doesn't know the first thing and she thinks, what do you need to know? because if nothing else music fills the hole inside her. Or does it open up the hole?"
This quote is taken from Lori&Joe, a stunning novel by Amy Arnold which takes you on a journey across a Lake District fell and into the dark depths of the lives of Lori & Joe. Full of intimacy and confusion, it probably wasn't the right book to read whilst on a relaxing break in the Lakes with family and friends, but I recommend it nonetheless. The narrative focuses on the elements of life which combine and separate the two characters, one of whom has an acute musical and artistic understanding, the other who hasn't really got anything to say.
There's something profound in the blissful naivety of the question 'What do you need to know?', because if you're anything like me, when you find a piece of music or a book that you enjoy you want to know who made it, and why, and where, and who released it, and in what formats, and how expensive is it and do I like it enough to add it to my collection. That context feels crucial to me, but I miss the naivety of not knowing and embracing something new for the first time, something my teenage years were full of, the exploration of a musical world waiting to be explored.
On Tuesday evening I added a BBC Proms concert with mum, it’s her cultural highlight of the year so I let her select the concert that we would go to, a fairly familiar programme including a Beethoven piano concerto and Shostakovich’s tenth symphony, both of which were incredible impressive, but it was the opening piece that really reverberated within me. A piece by avant garde composer Ligeti called ‘Lontano’. It was full of distance, eeriness, tension, complexity, it was beautiful and sublime, it drew me in, took me to another place and held me there. It filled the holes inside me and calmed me, before opening up questions, thoughts and ideas that the music had inspired to reveal.
The music and books that I engage with are far more than just an accompaniment to the complexities and obligations of life, they affirm me, enliven the emotions which are searching for a way out and allow those unspoken expressions to emerge. So whether you have anything to say about the music doesn’t especially matter, as long as you can allow yourself to be moved by it and embrace the feelings it leaves inside.
You can purchase Lori&Joe through Prototype here.
This article is taken from my August Mailout which also features some of my latest news and cultural highlights.
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