While this control over the listener’s
emotions is unattainable, the command a composer has over his craft
and its extremely dependent link to imagination can hit a nerve
in an improbable way.
The way Chico Buarque describes the suicide of a man on “Construção”,
so precisely and in three different ways, makes you think about the way you kiss
your wife in the morning, as if it was logical; and the way you say goodbye to
all your children, as if each was the prodigal son. And what about “O Que
Será”? That song defies any attempt of analysis: I have listened
to it for the past 15 years, and every single time, I get chills down my spine
and ask myself “how could anybody come up with this?”
That sacred relationship of stimulus and response, which is perhaps where the
power of music lies, is beyond comprehension.
The penetrating power of Coltrane’s tenor sax, the disarming beauty of
Milton Nascimento’s harmonies supporting his angel-like falsetto, the endless
agony contained in the happiness of Louis Armstrong’s voice and trumpet… it’s
beyond anything.
What made Duke Ellington struggle to scribble music in hospital napkins while
in fragile condition? What made Joe Henderson; hanging on to his life, suffer
to assemble his saxophone one last time, taking 20 minutes to go through a process
that does not take more than one minute even for a novice? How can it be that
Milton Nascimento came up with an unprecedented approach to harmony and songwriting
while, as a kid in the secluded mountains of Minas Gerais, he tried to listen
to the music in a small radio that barely worked… prompting him to “fill
in the blanks” the missing notes? What made Quincy Jones leave behind a
life of vandalism the very moment he touched his first piano (while vandalizing
a public school in Seattle)? How did Beethoven write nearly all his symphonies
with absolute perfection, while being deaf?
I would never dare to commit the stupidity of comparing myself to these gifted
musicians, not even in the privacy of my own thoughts. However, they inspire
me to achieve one goal: put a tear in your eye, or a smile in your face, as well
as any other emotion that lies between and beyond, by writing the best song I
can write, every time I write.
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