The Things We Feel but Cannot Name
This most mysterious symptom of the human condition
I don’t know when exactly it hit me.
The hours I spent in thought on that bench down under ... that one summer when the rainclouds around me began to part? Maybe the urge has always been there. Since the day I became conscious. To find a way to share the magnitude of the feelings that I have felt—in living. And most peculiarly, those feelings most profound and enigmatic. The seemingly unquantifiable. To visit the hidden realm at the center of the web from which all things are woven. Where reside the things we understand the least yet feel the most. This most mysterious symptom of the human condition.
Great authors have managed to bring to life these peculiar feelings with words alone, musicians with evocative sounds and vibrations, filmmakers combine the two through a lens, using the power of perspective to bring them to life in full color. But ultimately, what is it that makes characters or a story compelling? What is it about listening to a song that makes your hair stand on end? What is it about those books that have you clinging to every word? Those films that stick with you long after the credits roll? The works of art that change the way in which you move through the world.
Perhaps it is many things. As I’ve thought more and more on the subject, I’ve begun to wonder. What makes up that intricately woven strand within that web? What is it that keeps us so captivated, that lures us in, unable to pull away?
Put simply, I believe it may be the simple pattern of push and pull, dissonance and resolve. A pattern we recognize in nature, in life. One that speaks to us and that we understand somewhere deep within. A hypnotic back and forth to which we surrender ourselves. Though it speaks to us in a language we seem to understand, how ironic that we so often become wordless as a result.
I first became privy to such an idea while listening to Billy Joel’s SiriusXM radio station, where he gave backstory and a creative breakdown on what he considers one of, if not the best songs he’s ever written, And So It Goes. A song of heartbreak and loss, Joel was deliberate in his choice of the most dissonant chords he could find, with the aim of embodying the profound sense of defeat and heartbreak that his lyrics convey. Although he finishes each verse with a chord of resolve, the intent is not to uplift, but rather to represent a melancholy acceptance of the composer’s lonely fate. It’s a song that I can feel move through me, one that makes my hair stand on end. In the live version, watch as the audience waves their lighters in the air, united in their sorrows, the front row with their palms and chins resting on the edge of the stage. An act so intimate.
Something within that video spoke to me. And many times I’ve come back to it—hoping not just to hear, but to listen. To try to understand. Why does it affect me so?
I’ve accepted that the dissonance, portrayed through the piano keys, has power that exceeds that of the spoken word. It is something that all of us, no matter where we come from or what language we speak—all of us listeners—can feel. It’s an energy that need not ask permission to move through you. For you have no choice but to let it.
Similarly, I think also of the song The Swan (Le Cygne) by French Romantic composer Camille Saint-Saëns. Like And So It Goes, this classical piece consumes me. It demands the release of every feeling of sorrowful longing that has ever flowed through me. Without asking permission, it steals tears from my eyes.
I am pushed, pulled, and utterly moved in every sense of the word. I find myself strung along on a journey of highs and lows, reliving, through a rush of emotions, the poignant echoes of my own heart. As if the ebb and flow of my life was translated into sheet music and played by an orchestra.
While Joel first introduced me to the concept, it was a more modern artist who reinvigorated my interest and got me thinking that maybe, the pattern spans beyond music.
In a clip from popular music educator Rick Beato’s interview with the all-talented Charlie Puth, Beato asks a simple question: “What makes a song resonate with people?” Puth responds, “I think, a push and pull constantly.”
Puth then begins to play the chord progression from Someone Like You, Adele’s 2011 hit. Intentionally slowing down and speeding up as the chords change—emphasizing the undulating pattern—Puth adds, “Even the most unmusical person ... can feel energetically that something is holding you ... and then releasing you. Holding ... then releasing you.”
He continues: “And then you have a melody that does the dissonance and resolve ... dissonance and resolve too—with the relatable lyric. I believe that could be what a hit song is.”
While this concept of push and pull, of dissonance and resolve, is most conceivable through the medium of music, I have begun to think that it may be the determining factor in all manners of compelling artistic creativity—whether telling a story on paper, aloud, on screen, or even on a canvas.
In books, we are undeniably drawn to characters that are constantly beating the odds. We root for the underdog. This up-and-down aspect of a story's progression—a paradigm we instinctively understand—mirrors the one we live within.
A well-written dialogue contains contrast, a back and forth, keeping its listeners on edge, captivated, enthralled. Artists, instead of words, use tools like shadow and color and play with perspective, dictating the viewer’s gaze, attracting them to little details, moving their eyes from foreground to background, pushing them inward, then pulling them back. The dark is only fully impactful when juxtaposed with the light.
Contrast is key.
The highs are only as high as the lows are low. These chords of resolve, the ones that follow those of dissonance in music, are no different than the resolutions that follow the moments of conflict in our favorite stories. It may sound obvious, but stories, art, movies—they must have depth. Only then will the eventual transcendence really lift us off our feet.
A constant tension of dissonance and resolve ensures that the audience remains captivated, pulled forward by the invisible strings of anticipation and release.
Though my love for books is mountainous, to me, films are the summit. I believe that they have the capability to speak most profoundly and universally. The tools at the filmmaker’s disposal are simply unmatched. What may be too difficult to convey through words can be communicated through music. When silence must speak volumes, the filmmaker can turn to the camera and choose the perfect angle and perspective. The filmmaker has all the means available to bring a story to life multidimensionally. In my opinion, music is an integral part of that process. It is a layer that, when chosen with care, can make a film immortal. Music alone can have an almost indescribable influence. Pair it with the right scene, and you rob the audience of their breath. You eternalize a moment. You leave a mark.
I’ll never forget when I shared this movie with my roommate. It’s one of my all-time favorites.
Out of the corner of my eye, I could see the tears starting to fall as Charlie’s epilogue began. She hugged me tightly and David Bowie’s “Heroes” poured into the living room. I felt the tears drip down my neck. “Thank you” was all she managed through stifled sobs. We let the credits roll.
Moments like that are everything. And I’ll never forget this one. Just the act of sharing a film that I found deeply moving created a moment in which I cherish. I can’t imagine what it will feel like when I eventually share something that is truly my own.
I won’t pause the music until I strike that chord.
It is a dream of mine to one day make a film that does just that. While I have many goals that precede this one, as surely as I lay down my head each night to go to sleep, that dream awakens. It’s an urge that finds me in the mundane of everyday life, in the daydreams I’ve fallen into when I’ve found myself on the wrong side of the road. Though it may have always been there, I’ve only recently begun to truly understand it. I wasted a lot of time searching in the wrong places.
“If you want to know where your heart is, look to where your mind goes when it wanders.” — Walt Whitman
Whether it is a noble pursuit or an idiotic one, I have decided that I will try my best to take these feelings we all experience—the ones most impossibly complicated ones— and attempt to understand them. Therein lies my greatest ambition.
After all, it is the stories that leave us lost in thought, wordless, beautifully overwhelmed, that cement themselves into us forever. While these moments can be fleeting, and oftentimes confusing, perhaps that’s what makes them so vital. Perhaps it is these precise feelings that have, since our creation, led us to believe in a higher power—an explanation for the things we cannot seem to wrap our heads around. No matter what you believe, I think we can all agree that these emotions, these moments, mean something to us. While they may be hard to explain, there is no denying their existence. Or their uncommon value.
To borrow the words of Stephen King:
“The most important things are the hardest to say.”
Though we may use DNA to distinguish ourselves from one another, it is the commonalities within these strands that tie us all together. Sure, our experiences as humans will differ, and each of us is unique in our own, but we are united in more ways than we will ever be divided. Because we all live within the same patterns. We may speak different tongues but we understand the nature of push and pull, of dissonance and resolve whenever they speak to us.
It is of undeniable certainty that all of us will endure suffering. We will face pain in its many disguises. Just as the sun shines for all of us, the cloud does not discriminate among those upon whom it brings showers of cold rain. At one point in all of our lives, our hearts will beat for another—just as, without fail, one day they will cease to beat at all. As sure as the ice melts and makes way for spring flowers, we will long for the autumn breeze to save us from the scorching summer heat.
This pattern of dissonance and resolve, which pulls and pushes us along, is so familiar, so relatable.
We hear it whisper, though it hides its face.
And how poetic that when it speaks, we so often find ourselves at a loss for words of our own.
With love…
Gio