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Have you ever heard of synesthesia? It’s a condition that combines the senses, or, more accurately, a condition where the stimulation of one sense leads to the involuntary stimulation of another. Like the ability to hear colours, or where someone see numbers as colours. Synesthesia is pretty rare, but not at all unheard of. I used to teach with a guy who could hear colours, and lots of famous people over the years have had one form of synesthesia or another, including composers Jean Sibelius, Franz Liszt, and Rimsky-Korsakov, painters Kandinsky and Van Gogh, and tons of pop musicians like Eddie Van Halen, Stevie Wonder, Duke Ellington, and Tori Amos.
There are lots of different kinds of synesthesia too. There’s one blend where the person feels physical vibrations when they hear certain words (Marilyn Monroe had that) or where certain vowels take on particular hues (Billy Joel uses that form of synesthesia to help him write lyrics). Heck, there was even a guy who had all five of his senses fused. He thought everyone pictured numbers as certain types of people and that everyone could taste all the musical pitches, but when his uniqueness was finally discovered he was intensely studied for decades to come.
And while synesthesia (as commonly defined) is decidedly uncommon, I have a particular form of it and I am pretty sure that most sympathetic music fans have it too: I can hear emotions.
Okay, this might not exactly be synesthesia, but I can clearly tell that Edie Brickell was happy and smiling from ear-to-ear throughout the recording of her second album with the New Bohemians. I can hear the anger in Neil Young’s For the Turnstiles just like I can hear the tragedy in every note of (Sitting on) The Dock of the Bay, and that’s not even getting into the blues.
And possibly the most potent of my musical elixirs: every time I hear Brian Blade play the drums I can sense that he is simply brimming with joy.
I’ve told this story a few times already: the first time I heard Brian Blade I had no idea who he was. He was playing drums behind Joni Mitchell and he completely stole the show (for me, at least). It’s not that he was flashy or loud, rather it was the thick, unmistakeable beam of joy that was pouring from his drum kit that stole all my attention. I was happily flabbergasted and soon discovered his name.
Then I found out that Blade plays with lots of other musicians that I like, so I started pretty much stalking him. I just had to hear that joy of his every chance I could.
And on June 30th, 2016 there he/I was again, this time at the Ottawa Jazz Festival (where the two of us have synthesized together many times before). This time he was playing with Chick Corea and Christian McBride so there was a whole lot of awesome spilling from the stage, but what poured the thickest was that wave of pure, sonic joy emanating from the tips of Brian Blade’s drumsticks. I don’t know if it’s him doing it or it’s me doing it and I don’t care, so long as it keeps happening.
Give him a listen sometime and let me know if you can hear it too.
Todd Man Out 