Desire

Last night Andrew said the word "iron", pronounced, as it's spelled, with the /r/ before the second vowel. So naturally I laughed at him and said "iron, iron!" (pronounced, as it's pronounced, with the /r/ after the second vowel). But he kept saying it his way. When I insisted, he began teasing me by blatantly refusing to admit there was even a difference. "Say 'fern'," I commanded, and he did. "Say 'I earn a lot of money.'" He did, with a sharp pause between the first two words. "Now say 'I earn a lot of money, but you don't." He said "I-ron a lot of money..."

The odd thing was, I panicked. I started yelling at him to say it the way I did, just once. Finally I think I started to scare him and he said it. My heart rate was up, and I had to catch my breath. And poor Andrew was, and remains, totally confused.

I tried to explain (or avoid explaining) by saying it was just a weird OCD thing, but he wanted me to try. And the best I could do was to say that I got an image in my mind of his actually saying the word my way, and the feeling that that image was never going to be realized gave me a feeling of panic or suffocation. Like at intersections, if there's a manhole cover or some other noticeable irregularity in the road surface, and the cars keep just missing it to one side or the other...I have in my head the image of a wheel going perfectly over it, right in the middle, and if I can't actually see it, the image lingers, unfulfilled, rattling in my brain and making it hard to think about anything else, which leads to panic and claustrophobia.

Perhaps I, in my mild OCD, take this particular phenomenon to extremes sometimes. But I believe the basic underlying desire must be a universal thing. At least, I believe musicians make abundant use of it. So many of my all time favorite moments in songs or musical pieces rely on the tension between the desire to hear a certain chord, rhythm, melody, transition, and the actualization of that desire. When it's been delayed, hinted at, teased at, and then finally, finally, it happens...or, when it happens only once, and the next time, you're left hanging...but it's tantalizing in a beautiful and powerful way, and not scary and frustrating because you can always listen to the piece again. One aspect of writing powerful music is to master the creation, satisfaction, and frustration of desire in the listeners.

I can't make this make sense without a musical track to this post. If you don't know what I'm talking about, ask me for some songs, and I'd be more than happy to illustrate what I mean. :-)

Dipping and weaving
Flutter through the golden needle's eye
in our haystack madness.
Butterfly-stroking on a Spring-tide high...