Making Music as Embodied Dialogue

The Opening Jam

Warm air embraces me as I close the door and wipe my shoes on the mat. The aroma of lunch, possibly chicken soup, and the murmur of conversation permeate the air. I turn my attention toward the adjacent sitting room where I see two men facing each other with a drum between them. One of them is a small-framed man who looks in his early 20s with buzzed, blond hair. He is hunched over a guitar resting in his lap with one hand atop the drum. The other man is older, with a graying beard. The man with the guitar is showing the other how to beat out a 4/4 rhythm: ::Bwang::::Bwang::::Bwang:: ::Bwang::. The bearded man tries to follow but does not hit the beats with the same precision and regularity as the guitar player. Together, they sound like a horse galloping with an irregular cadence: ::Ba::Bwang:: ::Ba:Bwang:: :Ba::Bwang::. When I walk into the sitting room, they both turn to look at me.

“Hello,” I say reaching out my hand to the man with the guitar. “I’m Steve. I met with Jason last week about volunteering with the music program.” Jason is the volunteer coordinator.

“Hey,” he says shaking my hand weakly and looking me in the eye before quickly averting his gaze. “This is GP Jams. We heard you were coming today,” he follows quietly.

“I’m Paul,” interjects the bearded man in a raspy voice extending his hand. His beard has flecks of dried spit and/or food, and his fingers have the burnt orange of a frequent smoker.

“Nice to meet you,” I say shaking his hand briefly before letting go to rub my hand slyly against my jeans.

“And I’m Jordan,” says the guitar player in a muted voice.

“Nice to meet you, man,” I reply looking at him.

I sit down on the piano bench and remove my bass from its case. Both Jordan and Paul watch me, arousing a feeling of self-consciousness. My relatively new pair of jeans and button-up shirt stand in stark contrast to Paul’s stained pants and shirt and Jordan’s tattered sweatshirt. I rest my bass in my lap and play a scale to warm-up my fingers.

“Could you float me an E?” I say, looking at Jordan. “I want to make sure you and I are in tune.”

“Sure,” he says plucking the low E, the thickest string on the guitar. The frequencies of our notes are not aligned, creating discordant sonic waves that reverberate through the bass into my body. I adjust the tuning peg on my bass’s headstock. The waves’ jarring intensifies the closer they get to becoming in tune with one another making my body feel on edge—reminding me sound is an embodied experience that is tactile as much as it is aural (J. Shepherd & Wicke, 1997). When finally aligned, our instruments sound in unison. After the grating sonic waves this placid resonance feels much like the relief of scratching a pesky itch in the middle of the back. Using my E-string, I tune the remaining three as Jordan and Paul watch.

“So,” I say. “This is my first time. What do we have happening here?”

Paul stands up and states, “I’m gonna go have a cigarette,” as he makes his way to the porch by way of the back door.

“Alright, Paul,” Jordan says in a monotone, deflated voice before looking at me and giving me a shrug in response to Paul’s seemingly abrupt departure. He strums a chord that I recognize as E-minor by the pattern of his fingers on the fret board before asking, “So, what kind of music do you play?”

“A lot of music,” I reply chuckling as I realize the non-descript quality of my response. “Pretty much anything. Though I do like the Red Hot Chili Peppers and Primus. They have talented bass players.” ³

“Cool,” Jordan replies meekly on hearing my interests. Then without prompting, Jordan begins playing a guitar riff that I immediately recognize as the song “Otherside” by the Chili Peppers from their seventh studio album Californication released in 1999. His playing lacks the life that John Frusciante had when picking the riff on the album. Although easily recognizable, there is a metronomic quality to the riff as if he were answering to some external, mechanical unity and not to his own embodied life—what Bakhtin (1990) described as the unity of answerability and the substance of aesthetic experience. I follow on the bass providing the root notes to his chords as if by second nature. My playing, in contrast to Jordan’s, is more confident. Having spent many years listening to their albums, watching their live performances, and playing/dancing along with both, my technique has a polish derived from an embodied cognition present in the act that is making music (see Bowman, 2004). Also, the song excites me, which lends a degree of vitality to my playing. Together, we play the intro riff, and the minor quality of the phrase fills the room. Jordan stops soon, before the point where the first verse would begin, and looks at me. “That’s all I know,” he says offering a brief smile.

“It’s cool,” I say with a grin. Silence follows my response that is broken only by my absentminded plucking of my bass. Eventually, I silence my strings and look at him. “So, how about yourself?” I ask in return wanting to learn about Jordan.

“Metal and Alternative Rock,” he says. We sit together in silence.

“What bands do you like in particular?” I probe.

“Do you know any Alice in Chains?” Jordan inquires looking at me. Alice in Chains came into the public consciousness when Grunge entered mainstream popularity during the mid-1990s. Grunge is a subgenre of rock characterized by an apathetic sound and near despondent lyrics that originated in the Seattle area, sparking the interest of Generation X in particular (see Strong, 2011). Notable bands that fall under the Grunge subgenre include Nirvana and Pearl Jam, as well as Alice in Chains—popular bands when I was becoming aware of music in my life.

“I know their music, but I don’t know how to play any of their songs off the top of my head,” I reply. “But I can follow you.” In my experience, it is easier for a bass player to jump into a song without knowing the progression, because there are less harmonic demands on the instrument. A bass player typically plays the root note, whereas guitar players have the added responsibility of acknowledging the major and minor qualities of the song in their playing through differentiating between A and A-minor for instance. In other words, bass players are able to contribute meaningfully to the experience of a song with less tonal information.

Jordan nods at me, turns his attention toward his guitar, and begins playing the opening riff to a song I recognize as “Down a Hole” from their 1992 album, Dirt. He fingerpicks an A-minor chord letting the individual notes harmonize together to create the somber tone that characterizes Grunge music. There is an ineffable depth to his sound that provides the phrase with a breath-like quality bringing to life the morose contours of the song.

I listen to the progression to get it in my mind before finding the feel through my fingers to provide a lower octave of sound to warm Jordan’s chords. Together, Jordan and I play the opening riff. Jordan’s clear fingerpicking suggests an intimate familiarity with the guitar. Although his brief performance of “Otherside” lacked life, this song moves with vitality.

*  *  *

Music is an aesthetic expression presenced in the relation between the performer and the audience (keeping in mind performers may be audiences to themselves). When I invoke the term “aesthetic,” I mean those expressions perceived bodily that convey, as described by Dewey (1934), the “fulfillment of an organism in its struggles and achievements in a world of things” (p. 18)—or in other words, an experience. Musicians require the technical capacity to manipulate sound through their medium, in this case the guitar, to exploit it to its fullest extent to evoke meanings not possible through other mediums (e.g., painting, dance, language, etc.). The robust tone of Jordan’s chords sounds not only the chord but also his skill and comfort with the guitar. Although technical proficiency is important to perform a song, it is not a sufficient condition for fostering and bringing an aesthetic experience to completion through sound. Also needed is a degree of resonance between the aesthetic object and one’s life dwelling within his or her social and physical environments. Bakhtin (1990) referred to this as the unity of answerability, which is what distinguishes an object experienced as “aesthetic” from one experienced as “mechanical.” In the former experience, the artist/audience answers the aesthetic address posed to him or her with one’s own life. Or voiced differently by Dewey (1934), we understand an aesthetic object as stemming from human experience as opposed to some place outside our lived reality. Music is an outward expression of meaningful experience.

*  *  *

When we get to the point where the first verse should start, he does not sing. Instead, we continue to play the progression instrumentally. Then, without warning, Jordan switches chords to play the chorus, while I still continue to play the verse. Sensitive to the clashing of our notes against one another, I silence my bass and watch Jordan to get a flow for the chorus. When I regain the feel of the song, I jump back in and follow his guitar. He still does not sing, and for that matter, neither do I.

We play through the verse and chorus progressions with smooth transitions now that I am familiar with the switches. Because Jordan is not singing, I decide to take some liberties with the bass line. In addition to playing the root notes of the chords, I layer in notes that accentuate the minor key to flesh out the gloomy contours of the song as per the style of the Grunge genre. The minor reverberations of the chords wash over my body evoking a somber contemplation. I close my eyes and sway slowly in time with our chord progression. My awareness of anything beyond the song diminishes. I slip into the music letting the subdued rhythmical sound encompass and permeate my body. The lyrics of Layne Staley, the lead vocalist of Alice in Chains, echo in my mind, “Down in a hole/feelin so small/Down in a hole/losin’ my soul/I’d like to fly/But my wings have been so denied.”

*  *  *

Music’s dialogical qualities emerge in the meeting of performer and audience that gives rise to song. Ensemble musicians, as Buber (1958) might describe, enter mutually into and take a stand in the “living center” of relation. The living center is the presencing of the unity of mutually influencing selves and others in their meeting within a simultaneously shared and unfolding present. In the case of music, the living center becomes manifest in the song that emerges between the individual contributions of the musicians. When taking a stand in song, the relationship between performer and audience is one that concurrently provides definition for self and other in the event of meeting while remaining sensitive to the unfolding quality of a shared present. Musicians arouse an embodied experience in both themselves and their audiences by casting a sonic shroud over those who allow themselves to stand in relation to the living center of the song. The living center of song is an embodied event that creates a shared experience through establishing a temporal and affective relation between self and other. J. Shepherd and Wicke (1997), sociologists and cultural critics, offer the term states of awareness to describe the embodied experience of music that is suitable for fleshing out the temporal and affective dimensions of musical expression. Concretely speaking, the relation established between Jordan and myself in performing “Down in a Hole” is not only a cognitive one to ensure that I am playing the right chords, it also is an embodied relation aroused through our temporal and tonal manipulations.

Slipping into the song as I experience playing with Jordan in this moment is to fall into what Alfred Schutz (1971, 1976) would call the durée, or the inner sense of time as expressed musically by the performer. Levitin (2006) noted that musicians also refer to this as “the groove” or “the pocket” when the music plays the members of the ensemble, as opposed to the other way around. In these moments, although the duration of a song may be measured in minutes and seconds according to “commonsense reality,” the song actually is not experienced as minutes and seconds as gauged by the clock (unless, of course, the tempo is 60 beats per min). The slower tempo of “Down in a Hole” creates an elongated experience of time that differs from the chronologically metered moments of commonsense reality. Implicated in this temporal relation established when entering into the “living center” of the song is the affective quality of (potentially shared) states of awareness.

Musicians produce the affective qualities of music by manipulating sound through some instrument/medium (including one’s voice). Neurologist Daniel Levitin (2006) noted that in the West, major keys are associated with feelings of happiness and minor keys with sadness for reasons that are largely cultural. However, there is evidence to suggest that Western music is able to arouse analogous feelings within those who are culturally unaware of Western music (Fritz et al., 2009). Being in a minor key, “Down in a Hole” arouses a state of awareness more somber in quality that fits the dour experience of Grunge music.

*  *  *

As I continue to dwell within the song, my fingers moving seemingly of their own volition, memories from high school flash through my mind. I am sitting in a bus, alone, looking out the window on my way home from school. Then, my friends and I are tubing down the Apple River laughing and talking about crushes and sports and whatever else we used to discuss in our naïve youth. Now I am driving to watch our high school football team, and then a concert with my friends, and now I am on a bus with my track team on our way to a meet.

Although some of my memories of “Down in a Hole” resonate with the somber quality of the song—such as sitting alone on the bus—the specific emotional resonance between the song and the memory is not a necessary condition for the memory’s arousal. Levitin argued that music has the capacity to unlock memories in our mind from particular times and places when the song was experienced. Accordingly, the body remembers events during which the song was experienced regardless of that experience’s emotional quality. And each of these remembered events provides an opportunity for persons to share those threads of experience composing the tapestry of one’s life.

I look up at Josh. His gaze is fixed and unfocused downward at some point elsewhere beyond the house. The thought, “To where and/or when did he go?” crosses my mind briefly before again giving my attention to the song interspersed with my own fleeting memories.

*  *  *

Of particular significance is music’s capacity to evoke affective experiences without specifically naming them. Susan Langer (1942) referred to this as music’s “non-discursive” capacity to arouse feelings without relying on a system of signification in the sense of denoting specific objects or experiences (i.e., language). Although music (non-lyrical) lacks a denotative capacity, Langer argued that “[t]he real power of music lies in the fact that it can be ‘true’ to the life of feeling in a way that language cannot” (p. 243). And what happens in this being true to the life of feeling is that music invites the audience to fill that feeling with their own experiences. Whereas language reaches the heart by way of the mind, music reaches the mind by way of the heart. Although I cannot speak for Jordan, in this instance when we are playing music together, the music shows me feelings and memories of a time that has come and passed—points of possibility for the sharing of personal experience. However, meaningful experiences evoked through allowing ourselves to become vulnerable to music do not solely depend on their outward expression for their significance (J. Shepherd & Wicke, 1997). Rather, their import simultaneously arises with the connections they summon to prior and emerging lived moments.

*  *  *

Eventually, Jordan and I lose interest in the song, our fingers become less committed to playing, and we taper into an unresolved silence. I open my eyes and become aware of the house and Jordan sitting near me. We sit for a minute in the silent wake of the song.

“That was kinda cool,” I say looking up at Jordan.

“Yeah,” he says.

After what feels like a few moments of silence, Paul saunters back into the sitting room and makes a request to play the clichéd rock anthem “Free Bird” by Lynyrd Skynyrd. We oblige. Jordan takes a moment to show me the chords. I nod when I feel comfortable, and he begins playing the song. Paul jumps in with the lyrics, but I do not hear them. Instead, I listen to Jordan’s playing that has lost the vitality he had during our performance of “Down in a Hole.” As we continue to play the song, the lack of life in Jordan’s playing hinders our presencing of the living center of song. What had once felt like an organic connection now feels lifeless.

Our next couple meetings unfolded in similar style. I would show up and provide accompaniment with Jordan on the songs Paul desired to play. Sometimes we would have different members of the GP request to hear some Neil Young or Tom Petty. Sometimes Jordan and I would have an opportunity for just the two of us to make music, and during those moments, we would play “Down in a Hole” or other songs including Metallica’s “No Leaf Clover” or Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Simple Man.” In between songs, our conversations were limited. We shared our relational statuses and what we did for work, but the bulk of our conversation involved continuing to share our musical interests. In hindsight, sharing our musical tastes was a means of identity work (see Frith, 1987). Our mutual interest in rock and grunge music connoted a slightly rebellious stance toward our social environments and identification with an apathetic, disillusioned view of the world. Admitting a relationship with such bands also suggests the possibility of similar experiences, such as being around drugs and alcohol and perhaps being familiar with their mind-altering states. However, until confirmed, these potential shared experiences exist only as assumptions. Although we disclosed little else through conversation, the relationship we were developing musically was a different story.

The following is an excerpt from my experiences making music with Jordan during this time.

We jammed today. Jordan is a nice guy. My initial thoughts on him being stand-offish were ill-gotten. He played a few riffs of songs that he had written. We have a way of falling into each other in a complementary way. We may be of a few words, but our musical conversations are rich experiences. (February 9, 2011)

I can speak only for myself when layering my own perceptions of Jordan’s and my jamming at this point. Even so, on one day approximately 2 months after our initial meeting, the affecting richness of our musical conversations did not stay relegated to the realm of musical expression.

“Sober”

Jordan looks at me and asks, “Do you know any Tool?” We are in the sitting room of the house overlooking the street running in front of the house.

“Yeah, I know a bit of Tool,” I say, and begin playing the opening riff to the song “Schism” from their 2001 album Lateralus on my bass guitar. Jordan nods when he recognizes what I am playing. I stop after a couple runs through the riff, “That’s all I know of that song.”

He nods approvingly and asks, “Do you know ‘Sober?’”

“Sober” is a single off of their 1993 debut album Undertow.

“Yeah,” I say, de-tuning my E-string one step to what is referred to as drop-D tuning to provide a deeper resonance. With a chuckle, I say, “It’s rather easy. Just two notes.” Jordan smiles and begins de-tuning his guitar as well. “Yeah,” he says with a chuckle matching mine.

Knowing Jordan will jump in when ready, I begin laying down the cardiac-like bass line on my freshly tuned low D-string. :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: Jordan watches me as he finishes tuning his guitar and then layers atop my bass line a similar progression two octaves higher. :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: The low notes from my bass envelope the tones from Jordan’s guitar that in turn provide my sound with a brighter resonance, which together performs clearly the minor timbre of the song. Our sounds complement each other yet remain distinct in their individual integrity, arousing a haunting air.

The cardiac rhythm of the song presences the “living center” of dialogic relation in which Jordan and I take a mutual stand. I close my eyes, and that familiar feeling of entering into the durée overtakes me. We play synchronized for a short while, my consciousness consumed by the cardiac rhythm of the song. :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: The minor quality aroused through our alternating of D and E^b notes emotionally contours the song and provides an opportunity to enter mutually into an embodied relation.

* * *

Dialogically speaking, entering into the living center of a song is also making oneself vulnerable to the embodied influence of music. Doing so elicits a common feeling that we experience as meaningful—as an aesthetic sense of wholeness (Dewey, 1934)—when met with the individuality of our existence. Consider the following observation from Levitin (2006) worth quoting at length:

If music serves to convey feelings through the interaction of physical gestures and sound, the musician needs his brain state to match the emotional state he is trying to express. . . . I’m willing to bet that when B.B. [King] is playing the blues and when he is feeling the blues, the neural signatures are very similar. . . . And as listeners, there is every reason to believe that some of our brains will match those of the musicians we are listening to. . . . even those of us who lack explicit training in music theory and performance have musical brains, and are expert listeners. (Chapter 7, para. 45)

Our mutual stance in the song creates the possibility for an emotional resonance between me, as an ethnographer, and Jordan as a participant—an emotional resonance that may give rise to individuated experiences while promoting joined understanding. In this shared emotional resonance, we find music’s capacity to arouse meanings within and between those persons who let themselves become vulnerable to its significance in personal and social life. Again, such a sensation may not necessarily give rise to identical experiences, but rather joint experiences that have become associated with a particular feeling.

* * *

Eventually, Jordan deviates from the progression of my bass line by strumming syncopated quarter notes that layer a sense of urgency into our sound. Then he begins singing:

“There’s a shadow just behind me/Shrouding every step I take.”

His voice sounds flat as if he is not providing enough breath support to fulfill the promise of the note as suggested by his slouched posture.

“Making every promise empty/pointing every finger at me./Waiting like a stalking butler/who upon the finger rests/Murder now the pattern must we/Just because the son has come?”

At the end of this line, Jordan and I simultaneously begin strumming our strings harder creating a more full and adamant resonance in the room. His voice also increases in volume and tone and becomes more aligned with the key of the song.

“Jesus, won’t you fucking whistle/Something but what’s past and done?”

Hearing the profanity pulls me out of the durée, and I look around to see whether there is anyone within earshot. Gratuitous profanity is not encouraged in the house because of a desire to keep the environment in good taste, and sometimes there are children present. Music does not foster a connection between persons that is immune to distractions from beyond the experience of making it together. In the spirit of music’s dialogical qualities, consider the following from Buber (1958): “How powerful is the unbroken world of It, and how delicate are the appearances of the Thou!” (p. 98). Finding no one in our immediate presence to hear the profanity, I close my eyes and return to focusing on the Thou, the precious and ephemeral moment of meeting embodied in our co-playing of the song.

“Jesus, won’t you fucking whistle/Something but what’s past and done?”

With the completion of the final lyrics, Jordan and I strike Ds on our instruments and let them resonate fully as we break into the chorus. Instead of the cardiac rhythm—:::: Da Duh :: Da Duh :::: Da Duh :: Da Duh ::::—we sound whole notes from our guitars while we maintain the same alternation between D and E^b.

“Why can’t we not be Sober?/I just want to start this over/Why can’t we drink forever?/I just want to start this over.”

Jordan and I fall back into the cardiac rhythm. I bob my head in time with the song and look up at Jordan. His gaze is fixed on some far off place not within the house but returns slightly as he begins singing the next verse:

“I am just a worthless liar/I am just an imbecile/I will only complicate you/Trust in me and fall as well.”

As I dwell within the durée aroused through our playing of “Sober,” I focus on fretting and plucking my notes so as to house Jordan’s guitar within a warm resonance magnifying the mysterious and at times unsettling dissonance of the song.

“I will find a center in you/I will chew it up and leave/I will work to elevate you/Just enough to bring you down.”

Together, we announce the chorus by letting our instruments ring nice and full on the D, while Jordan sings the lyrics.

“Why can’t we not be Sober?/I just want to start this over/Why can’t we drink forever?/I just want to start this over.”

We fall back into the cardiac beat at the conclusion of the chorus. At this time, however, Jordan begins singing the outro moving the song toward the close.

“I want what I want/I want what I want/I want what I want/I want what I want.”

With his final lyrical utterance, Jordan and I accent the somber cardiac beat and bring our strings to rest—before accenting the next notes to emphasize their sound by presencing fully the silence in between. Then Jordan looks at me, and we accent our last notes and let them resonate around the room until our strings grow tired and come to rest.

Jordan and I maintain eye contact and nod at each other. I share, “That was cool.” Jordan says nothing. He just continues nodding. Together, we sit in silence. I pluck meandering random notes on my bass, while Jordan does the same on guitar, but today, the silence bothers me. “What brings you to The GP?” I ask.

“Well,” he says, then pauses. “I used to be up at ABH for about four months.” ABH is how members of the GP refer to Appalachian Behavioral Healthcare, an in-patient mental health hospital in Athens. Ex-patients of ABH are encouraged to attend the GP on discharge to help them maintain a positive state of mental health, affordable housing, and employment in their transition back into community living.

“I am what they call a polyaddict. ⁴ I’m addicted to alcohol, opiates, and benzos. They said that this would be a good place to stay to keep my sobriety.” “They” being the staff at ABH.

“Wow,” I reply not knowing how to respond. As a would-be former smoker, I find nicotine a difficult addiction with which to deal, particularly the irritability I exhibit when it is absent from my system for extended periods of time. I cannot image having to cope with the withdrawal from multiple substances simultaneously. Silence hangs thick.

“And I just like doing the music really,” Jordan says breaking the silence and changing the subject. “Music is pretty much everything to me.”

“Really?” I reply. My curiosity is piqued.

“Music is what got me through everything. Like, I’ve always been an introverted person; you know what I mean? I’ve never really had a lot to say. Like in school, my teachers would ask me to read a paper in front of the class, but I couldn’t go up and read the paper. But I have no problem with playing at an open mic. And like with my girlfriend, if I can’t really explain what I am feeling, I will play a song for her. It seems like a lot of times what I am trying to say doesn’t come out the right way.”

“And music helps you do that?” I probe.

“Yeah, man,” he replies. We fall into a silence that he soon breaks.

“I tend to not really talk about my problems, I just tend to listen to music, or I’ll write poems and stuff. I’ll write about whatever’s going on with me. Whenever I’m happy, I don’t really write. I’ll just listen to whatever. But there are other times, where I just need to hear a particular song. Like “Sober,” for example. That is one of the most accurate songs I have ever heard.”

“How do you mean?”

“Well, think of the lyrics, man,” he says.

“I am just a worthless liar/I am just an imbecile/I will only complicate you/Trust in me and fall as well/I will find a center in you/I will chew it up and leave/I will work to elevate you/Just enough to bring you down.”

He pauses when he is done and another silence descends on us.

“If that isn’t addiction, I don’t know what is,” he continues. “I mean, you trust in an addict, and you’re done. The constant lies. Not being able to handle responsibility, because the only thing you care about is getting the high.”

“Huh,” I respond at a loss for words. What I experience as a reflective silence again descends on us, and I dwell in Jordan’s self-disclosure.

The lyrics replay in my head, “I am just a worthless liar.” My wife comes to mind and my frequent attempts to stop smoking. I am able to go for a couple weeks, but eventually, I fall off that wagon. And when I fall, I make a point not to smoke around her, pop some gum or brush my teeth after each smoke, and wash my face and hands obsessively in attempts to hide the evidence. However, when we kiss, she knows. Her head pulls back, her eye contact is intense and searching, and she poses that inevitable question, which is not so much a question as a statement, “Did you smoke?” In the past, I would always reply with a “no,” thinking that I could regain control and get back on the wagon. Sometimes she would follow with the question, “Would you tell me if you did?” And my commitment to cover my weakness and hide the urges under the false pretense that I had control would sound a “Yes” that neither I nor she believed.

*  *  *

J. Shepherd and Wicke (1997) believe that “music’s ability to circumvent the world of objects allows it a characteristic access to the unconscious that is not open to language” (p. 63). I tend not to heed the lyrics when I listen to a song. Rather, my attention is focused instead on the non-discursive aspects of music. As a bass player of nearly 15 years at the time of this encounter with Jordan, my very perceptions of my environment and the interactions to which I bear witness or in which I participate are influenced by the musical demands of this instrument when in performance with others (see also McRae, 2009; Merleau-Ponty, 1945/2002). The traditional responsibility of the bass in an ensemble is to help maintain the rhythm and support the melody. In my experience, this role is overshadowed by the lead guitarist and vocalist. However, this does not mean that the bass is without its merits. Playing bass has cultivated within me an extra sense for hearing the rhythmic qualities of song. And these musical influences on my corporeal being extend beyond my perceptions during performance periods and into the various other encounters in which I may find myself throughout the course of a day.

*  *  *

The cardiac rhythm of the song, the only part that I had devoted my attention to until now acquires a new meaning. I begin to think deeply about my smoking habit and the experience of nicotine’s absence within my body. When hooked, the passage of time slows to protracted moments of discomfort. The beat of my heart becomes palpable as my consciousness is consumed with thoughts about when my next cigarette will be and the relief that is provided with one puff. However, eventually I began to move beyond such realizations into the ways in which smoking can weave into and shape the basic rhythms of my life.

Experiencing the cardiac rhythm of the song in the performance of “Sober” through my bass-colored perceptions presences the pattern of addiction as not simply withdrawal symptoms—but the way that smoking, for me, can become woven into the fabric of my life. I think of the times that smoking insinuated itself into my life’s basic rhythms. When I had my morning coffee, there was a cigarette. When I needed to take a break from writing, there was a cigarette there to help me think. When I wanted to have a pint with friends, there was a cigarette. If I needed to pass time, there was a cigarette. And if I just wanted to enjoy a smoke, there was a cigarette. In my life, smoking is not just an addiction to nicotine but an activity embedded within the ebbs and flows of my everyday life. This realization, made possible through our co-performance of “Sober,” is where we find music’s capacity to foster embodied and edifying dialogues across difference.