Notes From an Amateur Writer #4 - The Soundtrack to Grief and Loss

Typewriter

THE SOUNDTRACK TO GRIEF AND LOSS

The grey clouds hung, ominously, refusing to part. Refusing to make way for what was to come. And what was to come? More of the same? If anyone knew then they were not saying. All eyes were cast down, and sight seemed to penetrate inwards. To the internal, to the grey clouds within.

What's born will die, what lives will one day cease to do so. These things are known. But sometimes a line is crossed, a demarcation we fail to understand. A fundamental, philosophical heartbreak is perpetrated upon the unsuspecting. There is the human condition, the unknown at the centre of all that is known. But then there is the unknown at the centre of that.

Have you ever listened to a piece of music so beautiful, so hauntingly majestic, that you find yourself within a kaleidoscope of emotional intensity. How did you get there? How did the melody transport you there? And where is there? Where is that place you now find yourself? Is it a collective emotional state that exists within us all? Or is this only known to the few? I have questions, many of them. I have few answers. All I know is this happens to me. With the right piece of music it will happen every time.

A British television drama that I have watched recently and one in which I have experienced this with is a show called 'Broadchurch'. As a writer I am interested in the emotional state. How it is created with words. Movies and TV shows have the benefit of having music to reinforce those words. The imagery exists outside of yourself and the music seems to act as a form of glue to entice you into its midst at an emotional level. This intrigues me.

At the heart of Broadchurch are flawed, and very human characters. Watching from the beginning I wasn't sure whether to like them all or not. Especially one of the two main characters, the police detective played by David Tennant. His stand-offishness, making him appear abrupt and not particularly likeable. But as in all quality writing, one starts to see the multiple layers to his character. He has a past, and is deeply troubled by it. It has shaped him, and continues to shape him to this very day. The more we get to know him, and his police partner (played by Olivia Colman), the more we see that these are not one dimensional beings. They are human, in every sense of the word. The human condition is at the heart of who they truly are. They feel - and are plagued by - a deep sense of loss and grief, and don't seem to fully understand what to do about it.

What reinforces the power of this drama, and the emotionality of it, is the soundtrack that backs it. I find myself listening to some of these tracks, and following my mind where it chooses to go. I don't know if these sounds find the loss and grief that already exists within me, hidden for fear of the light, allowing for a sense of connection between me and these characters and their stories, or whether the songs just create these emotional states anew. I personally believe the former. But I don't fully know. I just know what I feel.

And what I feel is that at the heart of every being is this loss. Some cope with it and some don't. Some express it, and others run from it. Many people harness it, channel it, create works of art through its emotional furnace, and find a sense of release that way. And yet others go to war in a futile attempt to erase all connection to it. The two paths – the one within, or the one without. Is this the human condition? Is this what makes us who we are, and not something, or someone else? I don't know, but it exists, I have felt it, and I can see, in the world around me, the immense beauty that has come from that underlying sadness. From that sense of unknowingness. Who are we, and why are we?