the anatomy of a song

The delicate etude that lives on my flimsy music stand almost manifests itself into a person as I breathe life into it through my carefully articulated counts.

Her name is Andalouse, and above her shoulders sits a blunt, chestnut coloured bob. The melodic sixteenth note phrasings convey the overwhelming warmth of her open-mouthed smile, and the way it lights up when I make it through a run without utterly losing my composure.

Every carefully crafted component of this etude comprises each part of what makes Andalouse, Andalouse. The treble clef on the worn sheet music resembles a heart—a real, beating human heart. The determining factor of each note an instrument plays. The unique, circular notes, very much like the blood cells that ow through a body from the heart. Perhaps each staccato or slurred note represents every facet of Andalouse’s uttering personality. The anxious beat of her heart turns to sharp, staccato notes, and the way her thoughts swirl while in love turns into slurred, harmonious notes.

And as the tempo and expression markings change, it signies the ever-changing, dynamic emotions that she emulates, so much so that they become nearly infectious.

When I play the very last note of the song, Andalouse becomes one with the song again. As this happens, every intricate detail that brought her to life is simply a marking on a tattered piece of paper. She is not quite real, but every intricate detail of the song stems from an entirely real, all-consuming flurry of emotions, for better or for worse.

No amount of music theory can match the boundlessness of emotion that brings a piece of music to life. So much so that every component of a song fits together like a puzzle, molding itself into a person. Music is the physical and audible proof of its composer’s love or hurt. Any strong emotion that happens to engage their auditory, prefrontal, and parietal cortices, some of the music-making parts of the brain. Emotions so fleeting or overwhelming that they simply have to compose a song. No matter what, behind every note, crescendo, and expression marking in a piece of music, there is a place of feeling.