You can’t explain it
“You can’t explain E flat (Eb). You have to play it.”
Bradley Cooper
I recently watched an interview with Bradley Cooper, where he made this throwaway comment. It struck a chord with me. Simple, yet profound. Read it again, “You can’t explain E flat (Eb). You have to play it.” It makes so much sense to me. Some things have to be played to be explained, some things have to be experienced to be understood and to have meaning. I think a lot of art is like that. Even as someone who loves words, I see that music, film, dance, photography, a painting need to be experienced, they can’t always be explained by a perfectly worded sentence. Have you ever been to a concert where when asked about it, you fumble through your words only to land on, “You had to be there!”? Yeah, that’s because the concert needed to be lived, it needed to be experienced to be fully understood.
We’re in an age often referred to as the ‘Internet of Things’ and there is a potential danger that we live our lives vicariously through our devices. Counterfeit connection through curated text messages. Counterfeit highs, through video footage. Technology has been made for human flourishing and it’s aided our increasingly fast-paced lives, by making them a little easier. (I am so grateful for the GPS on my phone, maps were my nemesis when I first learnt to drive!) But we are hardwired for human connection.
For me personally, some of the most memorable and powerful moments I’ve had are times when I’ve been sitting with friends when either they or I are doing it tough. Not much is said, but their physical presence, the eye contact and the knowing sighs are everything that’s needed. It’s in those moments we’re not just being seen, we’re experiencing one another’s humanness and feeling the emotions. In turn, art that’s moved me the most has been in the gallery, it’s been in the theatre, it’s been in the cinema.
As someone who has ‘Intellection’ in their top five Clifton Strengths, one of my personal challenges is intellectualising experiences before living them. I allow my thoughts to lead me to inaction (that sentence is in present tense for a reason). And I wonder if it’s not just me. I wonder if we rob ourselves of richness, simply because we’ve allowed explanations to forfeit experiences.
Allow me to close with this, my friend, Kate Hendrick wrote a book called The Finder. The protagonist, Lindsay, has a prickly relationship with her parents and due to a series of awful events they had grown distant. Lindsay didn’t feel like she belonged in her own family. Toward the end of the novel, two sentences kneed me in the guts. The context, Lindsay’s parents told her that they loved her, her response:-
“But without the arms wrapped around me I don’t feel it.
And love seems like something you have to feel.”
The Finder by Kate Hendrick.
Love seems like something you have to feel. E flat seems like something you have to play.
Art seems like something you have to experience. Life seems like something you have to live.
May we be those that feel, that play, that experience and that live.
