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Written by Laura Cooney
(Twitter/Instagram: @lozzawriting)
Body language and tone of voice ― not words ― are our most powerful assessment tools.
I’m tone deaf.
That’s what she tells me every time I open my mouth to sing. It’s the noise, see. She can’t bear it.
And so my relationship with music develops strangely. The Beatles with my dad, musical theatre with my gran, The Beautiful South, played loud and drunken at 2am keeping the house awake.
DON’T PLAY THAT TO ME if I don’t feel like it, or I’ll likely murder you. Somehow I miss out on the seam of gold that runs through the universe.
I feel big things when music plays and then I forget. It’s like dreaming. If I’m drunk, it’s the type of feeling that makes you text and delete?
Every fibre of your being is on fire. You FEEL until the music hasn’t just entered your ears it’s now pouring from your body via your nostrils, fingertips and eyelashes.
Today, I’ve had a shocker at work, but the strangest and most empowering day for any female against a weedy little man.
I feel stronger than I’ve felt in ages. It’s not just been a long day, it’s been a long 4 months.
Music has pervaded this period, soulful, romantic, heartbreaking and wishful. I’m sick of it. I want to go apocalyptic and listen to absolute noise, music so jarring it cuts.
But I go somewhere in between.
The lights are strobing, bold triangles of light to silvery flashes, the effect is mesmerising. There is a ‘roar’ of timpani drum, who knew, and the band are vigorous.
It’s music that’s meant to make you feel and it does. It’s immersive: light, video, sound. The band are Public Service Broadcasting, start with Everest.
As the lights strobe, chords play frenzied and blended.
The bridge.
Light and sound, thought and something. It screams in my ear. It’s not the music, it’s my brain.
Something has hit home.
The organ has had a moment to process, the one its needed for a quarter of the year and it tells me I am strong, you’re the one that’s waiting on him. He needs to stop being a child.
I can’t explain how it’s the music that brings me to my full power. Because as I’ve already explained. I can never remember, like drunk sex. Amazing, but… what?
It was you, you showed me that there is no such thing as tone deaf. You opened a door, then the next one and then slammed them both in my face just as the music finally got hot.
It was you, at the crescendo who kicked whatever it was between us into the tall grass and while you might spend a while looking for it in the wrong place.
The universe and its music have started to sing to me again.
You’re wrong,
Lights flicker,
You break my heart.
How big is a drum-kit?
The music ascends.
I don’t want this anymore,
There is a key change and the beat changes.
Static.
And begin again.
You won’t wait for me? Well, pal, it’s me waiting. Grow up, won’t you?
Drum roll.
You won’t wait for me?
You don’t, fucking, have to.
I’m dancing along here quite the thing, taking back my power, until you see the light.
And if you don’t?
Well, my friend, there’s always the B side.
About the Author:
Laura Cooney is a writer from Edinburgh with work in Vine Leaves Press, Roi Faineant and The Voidzine She has work forthcoming in Heartbalm and Kobayaashi Studios.
Found on Twitter @lozzawriting and https://www.lozzawriting.com.
When she isn’t doing lots of writing you’ll find her with her children at the sea. There will be ice-cream!