The Gilmore Book Club

The Power of Music and how to attain it

Oh come all ye hobbits, elves and dwarves and humans

Oh come ye of middle earth and destroy the ring

Come and destroy him, he who’d bring the darkness

Oh come let us destroy him, oh come let us destroy him,

Oh come let us destroy him, Lord Sauron.

What is your favorite thing about the Christmas season? There's a lot I could name: holiday markets, Christmas trees, lights, food, movies, but I wonder if there might be another definition of favorite that I'm overlooking. Christmas is all about comfort and joy, so what brings me the most comfort and joy? What's the one holiday experience that I always start around September or October or whenever I get really stressed? Christmas music.

In college, I had one very small class, and we were all pretty friendly, which was rare in my experience. I'm not sure how we got on this topic, maybe it was part of a 'get to know you' thing, but at some point, they all knew I really loved Christmas music. So much so that it became a running joke of when Murphey's Law went into effect, or it was midterms or something, "I need to listen to some Christmas music" or "Just go listen to some Christmas music." And it was definitely not Christmas time. Not even close. But the soothing and grounding quality of holiday music prevailed, no matter the time of year.

To this day, I usually start playing Christmas music in June or July, usually because something stresses me out and sometimes because I just want to feel that vibe.

It's one of the things I miss most about attending church, being a part of a choir, and getting to sing so many different songs, particularly those about Christmas.

All jokes aside, though, what is it about Christmas music that has such a profound effect on not just me but everyone else as well? What is that feeling that it evokes in me that I am so drawn to, especially in times of need? Why is it that Tolkien composed his epic tales on the foundations of music and wrote melodies into scenes big and small?

By the way, Aragorn comes upon the love of his life, Arwen, as she sings and walks through the forest. Clearly, Lorelai needs to do more singing. A lot could have been different if she had karaoke-serenaded Luke way earlier in the series, but that's TV for you. Have to have the will-they-won't-they for a while. But I digress.

The final installment of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Return of the King, focuses on two great battles. One is the battle at Minas Tirith, the heart of Gondor. We join Aragorn, Legolas, Gimli, Gandalf, Merry, Pippin, and company as they make their way to the battlefield by one path or another, an entire community fighting to repel the evil that threatens their doorsteps. The other battle involves two little hobbits (Sam and Frodo) as they struggle to reach Mount Doom, destroy the ring, and save the entire world from annihilation. (Need a refresher on the first two books? Return to Part 1 Here)

I'm very Lorelai and Rory about my favorite movies and tv shows, and yes, one of those is Lord of the Rings. I can recite most of the lines perfectly in sync with the playback, even without the supporting film. Part of that is due to repetition, but part of that is the musicality of the scene, how the actor said it, the crescendo and decrescendo of each word that gets the audience to perk up their ears, the timbre that so viscerally depicts the line that you can feel the corresponding emotion in your bones, the tempo that wrenches you forward or draws you back until each second feels like it lasts a lifetime. 

When I describe some of my favorite moments in The Lord of the Rings, some of the best and strongest are scenes that include music. In the movie The Return of the King, Lord Denathor asks Pippin to entertain him with a song. (In the book, Pippin does sing for Denathor, but the lyrics don't appear in the text. The song we see on screen in The Return of the King is actually sung by Bilbo and then by Frodo earlier in the trilogy. I'm usually a stickler for replicating events as close to the book as possible, but this scene is so well done, that I'm making Gandalf unplant his staff and allowing it to pass.) 

The following scene is, to this day, one of the most haunting and soul-wrenching scenes I have ever witnessed. Denathor has sent his son, Faramir, to take back a city that has fallen to the enemy, but it's clear to everyone, including Denathor, that this is not only a lost-cause but a guarantee of death because they are woefully outnumbered. As Faramir and his warriors ride to retake the city, they are pelted with the decapitated heads of their fallen comrades and then bombarded with arrows. But back in the white halls of Gondor, Denathor nonchalantly eats his meal, ripping juicy chicken apart and smashing ripe tomatoes with his teeth so that his mouth and hands are dripping with red liquid. And in the background, Pippin sings his song, crest-fallen with the fate of Faramir and the ruthlessness of his new liege-lord, Denathor.

As I recap that scene, I can see it play across in my mind. I can see the shots displayed in the film and can hear the hoofbeats and the squish of tomatoes. I can feel Pippin's clear voice ringing out, a compassionate and understanding echo in the stark and cheerless throne room of Minas Tirith.

It's no Christmas song, but it's powerful all the same. All the connotations of Christmas are indeed part of what makes Christmas carols so special, but the music itself is the true power.

Therein lies my true quest: what is it about music that is so powerful, and how do we translate that into our lives? How do we attain so great a power?

I think back to my earliest memory of music for answers. Perhaps that's a better question for my parents. Regardless, when I ruminate on my childhood, the lullabies stand out the most. It's difficult for me to remember if my mother sang to us every night before bed, but I am certain that she came to my bedside, stroked my hair, and sang to me every time I was scared or felt ill. There may have been "Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star" when I was younger, but I remember the three the most: "Tomorrow We'll Go to The Fair," "All the Pretty Little Horses," and "Someday Baby."

"Close your little eyes. Sleep until you dream. Someday you will know. That you can be anything." - Someday Baby

Was it the songs themselves that gave me so much comfort? That the lyrics gave me hope and something to hold onto? Was it my mother's voice? Was it the familiarity of a melody I knew so well? Perhaps it was all of it.

After all, we were born of rhythm.

In The Lost Tales, Tolkien describes the formation of Middle Earth and the other land referenced in his works. Music is at the very center of his creation story. Music literally grows mountains and forms oceans. Music is not just an important power; it's the power. 

Music is a part of our creation story too. As fetuses, we grow inside our mother, surrounded by the sounds of her body, of her beating heart. And that's not just for humans. I remember when my mom was crate-training our dog, she read something that told her to put a clock in the crate because it reminds them of their mother's heartbeat and calms them down. It's why many studies show cats like to lie right on top of your chest because even though it may seem like they want to suffocate you, what they're doing is getting as close as they can to your beating heart.

That rhythmic interior is one of the first things we know. There, we are safe. There, we are whole. There, we have not been tainted with all the tumultuous events of life. When we are born, we leave that place, never to return again. Just imagine, for a moment, that you have no fear, cynicism, imposter syndrome, or trauma; if you knew that whatever you did, you'd be ok, that someone always had your back. What could you do if you felt like that? What would you be capable of if there was nothing to hold you back? That's the kind of environment we begin with, but the second we are born, its protection begins to evaporate. Can that feeling ever be recreated? Can we ever come close to the power that lies in such complete wholeness?

In the span of the few weeks when I was rereading The Return of the King, I kept my eye out for any other musical revelations. In a stroke of staggering weirdness, Brave New World by Aldous Huxley (and also on the Rory list) supplied a perfect example. The dystopian novel depicts a world so intentionally different from ours that concepts like 'parents' and 'marriage' are entirely archaic. In this world, everything is pre-destined, your place in society, your job, your friends, your hobbies- they even construct your beliefs. During the first few chapters of test tube human germination and scientifically replicated bodily hormone processes, I was growing concerned about the remainder of my reading experience- continual dystopian science class is not my idea of a good time. 

But even in such absurdity, amidst so much diversity, there was that one thing: rhythm. As children, specific phrases are repeated over and over to you while you sleep so that you internalize their messages, and as an adult, those ideas become not just a part of your belief system but a method of grounding and calming. When characters don't receive their happy pills (soma) and are distressed, these phrases are used to restore calm. What do they do when they gather to celebrate their founder and their way of life? Clink their test tubes? Recite formulas? No. They sing. Song after song, they extol the virtues of their leader, just like singing Christmas Carols in church, and rather reminiscent of the people of Gondor welcoming Aragorn as their new king.  

Aside from entertainment, my first instinct is to use music to be calming and grounding. As a young child, lullabies eased me into sleep, and as an adult, Christmas Carols lowered my Cortisol levels. I listen to piano music when I write to help me focus and drown out minor distractions. It pulls all the fine threads of energy flowing out of me into a tight braid, organized and controlled but strong and centered.

I read a quote earlier this year that rest is where you become more you. But I'd like to amend that to say music is where you become more you.

From the very beginning, the melody of our heart beating and the chorus of our blood pumping has instilled deep within us a need for this rhythm. Whether we find it playing on the radio, moving back and forth in a rocking chair, dancing at a club, or swaying our hands back and forth as we walk, we have that rhythm in our lives. And we need it to fortify and sustain us. But do we use it to its fullest?

Since the pandemic, I've started walking in the park every morning. Initially, I used these walks as a chance to make sure I got outside every day. Now, they are a part of my routine. I use that time to clear my head, wake up my body, listen to an audiobook, and prepare mentally and physically for the day ahead.

It's not unlike the song of a battle cry.

Translated from a song in the book to a speech in the movie, the song of the Erolingas is used to prepare the riders of Rohan for battle. Rooted in their history, their song is a remembrance that tells the story of their ancestors and pays homage and honor to their lineage. The same melody bands each warrior together, bonding each soldier to the one next to them, creating a host of people united in one cause, inspired by their shared past, present, and future.

It's that collective heartbeat that sounds within each person's chest that fortifies them. They are one but many, alone but together, terrified but hopeful, sad but proud, exhausted but exhilarated. That is the power of music. It strings together all the emotions, all the thoughts, all the notes of every story we've ever been a part of. It's a lifeline, a tremendous power for those who embrace it.

When I was in high school, I worked at a gift store. Part of the attraction of that small business was the free gift wrapping, an activity I discovered many people dreaded and were grateful to have that duty taken from their hands. As you can imagine, we wrapped a lot of gifts at Christmastime. A lot. There were times when I'd stand at our wrapping table for four hours straight, a pile of presents to be wrapped at the end of the table, and a line of customers waiting for their finished gifts. The ice cream makers, the coolers, and the bird feeders were the hardest to wrap. You'd usually have to make shift a box from scratch and puzzle out enough wrapping paper to cover it. Wagons and flag poles, on the other hand, just got a nice bouquet of curly ribbon. But it didn't matter what I wrapped; as long as the tiny old radio kept chirping out Christmas songs for me to sing along with, I could stand there as long as I needed, churning out picture-perfect presents with the precision and pizazz that would rival that of an Elf (the North-Pole kind, not the Middle-Earth Kind, although I'm sure they'd be very good at it too).

Papercuts and sometimes grouchy customers aside, that might seem like a low-stress example, so I'll take this to the extreme. It's Marathon time.

In 2013, I ran the Chicago marathon. I had tread hundreds of miles on the Chicago streets, weaving my way around the city, training for over a year. When I wasn't running, I researched. I read all the articles I could about persevering when it came to hitting the wall: the dreaded 20th mile where your body and mind threaten to give up entirely. But practicing sword strokes with a seasoned soldier like Boromir cannot prepare you for the shock of facing a blood-thirsty orc or Urukai; there's only so much training one can do for the unimaginable. Then, all the advantages you've gained completely disappear. Flight or Fight. That's all you know. Merry and Pippin chose to fight.

And so did I.

For weeks, I had dedicated time to compiling a running playlist. I accessed every song that had ever made me feel something for its ability to stir in me the strength to keep going. I debated which song to end my journey with for a while. It had to be powerful, so powerful as to make my mind and body forget that every muscle was screaming in pain.

Is there even such a power? I believe there is. There may even be more than one. The first is, of course, music. The rhythm. The beat. "You Can't Stop the Beat," is what the ending song in Hairspray says. And I agree. Experts will tell you a certain amount of beats per minute is optimum for running. It makes sense, but really, was I going to look up all the bpm for each song on my playlist? No, no, I was not. All I needed was for the song to be so strong and instantaneously invigorating that it needed to feel like I had donned a ring of power. And that song did it for me. The beat of that song propelled me forward, reverberating in my body each time my foot struck the pavement, pushing my legs onward despite all ills, driving my heart to keep circulating blood and oxygen through my body, encompassing me into a being that only knew that one thing: the beat.

It's that all-encompassing feature of music that holds its power. It brings together every shaft of light within you until it forms a beam so concentrated it incinerates all that stands in its path. It's the power of Gandalf the Grey that exercises evil sorcerers from Kings and restores them to their true selves. It's the phial of Galadriel, the light of Eärendil's star, expelling the darkness of evil with the radiant light of good.

What else can intrinsically hold so many opposite things to be true at once? I can only think of one thing: love. Is love a type of music? Is music an extension of love?

And let's be clear here. I don't mean love as the fluffy, gushy kind. I mean real love. The kind that's painful, sometimes even excruciating.

In film school, I made a short film about a dancer with a chronic illness. Yes, it was riddled with the technical insufficiencies we all associate with film school projects, but that's not why my teacher and classmates slammed it. They tore it apart based on the premise that someone, in this case, the dancer, would never do something that caused them so much pain, i.e., do something physical like dance while suffering from debilitating symptoms. I want to save the rest of this story for another time, but here's the point. People do it for love. A dancer will keep moving despite the pain; a mother will throw herself in front of a killing curse to save her child (don't believe me? Read Harry Potter); A solider will stand in front of the King of the Narzgul, facing down the menacing spiked mace and terrifying jaws of the Fellbeast to prevent the sadistic torture of her Uncle's broken body. If you analyze a lot of literature and movies, many a villains' downfall will occur because, in some way, they don't understand love. It may be a stretch, but perhaps, they don't understand music either, and I mean truly understand it.

I won't claim to be the biggest expert in love. (I mean, seriously, have you seen my love life? No? Well, read the blog post on The House of the Mermaids) But I am learning. I am trying. I am dissecting every movie, book, and TV show I know of to learn more about this mysterious subject. I have, of course, felt the power of music first-hand, but was I always using that power as it should be used? Did I even understand it? Sure, I had used some tunes to get out of a bad mood or comfort me on a bad day, but those times became fewer and far between.

Pre-pandemic, when I was going into the office almost every day, I noticed a difference in my demeanor. I was exhausted, all over the place, and didn't feel like myself. We had recently lost a co-worker, so most days, I sat in the office alone, barely speaking to anyone except our office neighbor when he said good morning and good night.

It wasn't until I started to play music out loud so everyone could hear it (and don't worry, it was at a respectful office level, and the door was half closed) and I sang to it that I started to feel better. I began to feel more like myself again. I had been ignoring a part of me for such a long time, that I didn't even notice its disappearance. I had let the shadows creep in and let them run unchallenged. It wasn't just that I had silenced a part of me that I enjoyed and had been raised on; I had been ignoring a fundamental trait of being a human, that vital beat that keeps us in the world, the pulse that means you're alive.

But now I have noticed. Now I have looked in the mirror (mine or Galadriel's, either way, it doesn't matter). I had seen what it was like to live without that power and now it was in my grasp to decide if I could save that power from extinction, not just in myself, but in others.

The 2020 pandemic interrupted our biological rhythms, the ebb, and flow of everything we do. So many of us were forced to a complete stop of everything we knew, but others were pushed into hyper speed- each throwing off the music that reflected our daily lives. I fell into the latter of these two categories. My job involved working with our online listings, especially those on Amazon. While I was quarantining with my parents, I was working just as much and just as hard as I usually do. This left no time for stopping to access anything. This was a time for pushing through.

Three years later, I've noticed that's my problem: I push through. Now I admit, there's a time for that, but when you do it so often, you begin to lose awareness; that's where there's an issue. I force myself to do things and say things and think things from the minute I open my eyes in the morning to when I fall asleep at night. There is little of my day that is genuine. It leaves me feeling hollow, robotic, wraith-like.

It's now my task to find the music again. Not just the obvious music, like turning on Spotify more or something, but my natural rhythms and where it harmonizes with the notes of the world around me. Everything has its own frequency- special in its individuality but also as a part of the whole. That is music. That is love.

So, where is my music? What is my music? What comes naturally to me and why? Where does my mind go when it daydreams? What does my body cry out for? What makes my heart sing? What would I do anything for?

The grandest overtures are in the smallest of things, the soft scrape of a page turning, the vibrations in my legs as I walk, the hushed chorus of falling snow, and the steadfast beat of my heart because those are the individual instruments that make up the orchestra.

There's wisdom in what I've discovered, but there's more waiting for me, buried in the unlikeliest of places, an ember waiting to be coaxed to life. Perhaps I am now Gandalf the Grey, wise and curious, but not yet at the height of my power and knowledge as Gandalf the White or Lady Galadriel. It is my task to keep looking, to keep questioning, to keep listening to the music that sings within us all.

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