Last week, I had an experience in public that made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.
If I had hairs on the top of my head, they would have probably stood up, too, but I lost them after my kids arrived. Such is the follicular cruelty of family life.
Anyway, the experience that produced this visceral response was music. It wasn’t recorded music, or music on the radio or music from a phone or a screen — this was music being performed live right in front of me. Specifically, it was the blend of human voices and percussive piano chords.
I was among a small audience at the back of The Brewery in Edward St, Shepparton, where two songs were performed last Friday evening as a teaser for Shepparton Theatre Arts Group’s forthcoming production of Little Shop of Horrors.
I must confess I’m not a huge fan of stage musicals, but this was different. There were no costumes or make-up, and nobody was trying to be anyone else — they were just people singing.
The performances were so powerful I had to clamp my mouth shut to stop my jaw from falling to the floor. Perhaps it was the confined space at The Brewery, perhaps it was being up close, perhaps it was the champagne, but I don’t think I was alone in feeling this punch of emotion.
What is it in music that has the power to change an ordinary moment into something unforgettable that can tap into memory, release dopamine, produce an involuntary physical response and alter a mood all within seconds?
At The Brewery, it wasn’t the words that moved me. Words are an intellectual response to the world around us, but this neck-hair experience went beyond the mechanics of words.
It was the same shiver I get when I hear that lonely, yearning bird call that stops me in my tracks in the bush.
It’s the same shuddering thrill I experienced when I heard Pachelbel’s Canon in D on the car radio while driving through north London on a dreary winter’s day more than 40 years ago. If you think you don’t know Pachelbel’s Canon, I assure you, you do. Everybody knows Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Its mournful, beautiful descending cadences are 300 years old and have been used in film, advertising and concerts for the past century whenever emotion is called for to the point of cliché. It was an old, sad tune my father sometimes played on the piano after another tedious day at work. As a teenager, it didn’t mean much to me.
But on that rainy day in London, I just had to pull over, switch off the engine and listen to the music. I sat in the car parked beside a nondescript suburban garden as the traffic rushed past. I put my head on the steering wheel because I just couldn’t drive any more. My eyes welled up, and I couldn’t see properly or work the gear stick and cry at the same time. Was this because I was going through a painful divorce, and all the sadness and beauty of the world came crowding in at that moment in the car? Did Pachelbel do that to me? Did his music dig up all those buried feelings?
Last Friday’s performance at The Brewery ended with a stunned silence filled with unspoken emotion. It was broken when the show director singled me out and, with a cheery smile, said: “Did I see you wipe away a tear, Mr Lewis?”
I returned the smile and thought, well, yes. There are many tears of all types locked away in a box inside us all, but music has the key to open it.
For more emotions, big and small, go to see STAG’s production of Little Shop of Horrors, which opens on Friday, September 6, at WestSide Performing Arts Centre in Mooroopna.
John Lewis is a former journalist at The News.