Emotions as Exquisite Music

In my last post I wrote about feelings. I wrote both about coming to be able to knowing what we’re feeling and understanding that more than likely we are often feeling more than one thing at once.

Here I’m going to use an extended analogy of emotions and music. In particular I’m going to use the image of a piano with 88 keys, with a sustain pedal and a mute pedal. On a piano, a musician can play one note at a time, or many notes all at the same time. The pianist can use the sustain pedal to let a note sing out for an extended period of time slowly fading away, or use the practice pedal to mute and cut short a note.  The artist can hit a key with soft tenderness, or a sharp staccato, or a great emanating sound – they are endless ways to hit a key on a piano.

Music also has chords and keys. Keys represent a series of notes that correspond to a particular pattern of sounds, and chords of ways of using they sounds together. Some chords like 1,3,5,8 are quite in harmony, others like a second or fourth can sound dissonant. And then there is a piece of music which takes into account all of this – the key, the chords, ways of playing notes, using the pedals, and invoking a style or genre of music.

Now imagine emotions as a note on a piano. Each emotion can be played or felt with different textures, intensities, durations, and so on, just like a note on a piano. Emotions can be in harmonious chords that go together  - joy, happiness, and satisfaction. Or emotions can be felt in unusual combinations, like bittersweet.

Our lives are like a symphony of emotions played across our body. They come and go, felt and then released and fading away for the next emotion to come in.

What symphony, or rock band, or rhythm of music and emotions is playing in your body?

To extend this a little further from the last post, for those that are new to music, they go through ear training. They learn how to recognize any given note on a piano. They play a note and then say what note it is, or they play a particular note to learn it and recognize it. This is just like learning emotions – asking what emotion is there and discerning what’s being felt.

Then musicians go through additional training to learn and recognize chords and different intervals of notes – thirds, fourths, fifths, and so on. This can be like learning and recognizing combinations of emotions.

Then musicians learn how to play. Starting with simple pieces with single notes one at a time with few chords, learning how to add texture and pedals and loudness or softness. It takes practice to train the hands and arms to be sensitive to a keyboard and an instrument. It’s the same with emotions as we learn how to feel textures and differences, for example a giddy happy versus a satiated happy. Or a boiling rage versus a simmering anger.

Just like it’s time a musician time to learn how to play an instrument, it can take time to learn our emotions. When you learn, it’s a joy to hear what we play and how we play.