21st August, 2022
I write this, having just watched Newcastle United hold Manchester City to a 3-3 draw in the Premier League. By 63 minutes, all of the goals which would be scored were scored and, as the clock ran on towards the end of the match, so too did a tense expectation arise; something was due to happen. Another goal could have been scored, causing one of these teams to leave the pitch as victors but, despite flurries of activity, no decisive action arose. So what was the expectation, what was the guaranteed outcome that we awaited?
The silence which follows any activity is a moment in which a great deal of signification occurs. Once we are past the relentless onslaught of bustle, we have a moment during which we can digest that which we have just consumed. In the context of a football match, the time following the full-time whistle is when the fans, the players, the managers and the pundits all throw their analyses into the ring. The time when the match is absent is the time when the match may be perceived as a whole entity, rather than something unfinished which is still unfolding. As a match reaches its conclusion, we anticipate the moment when it will finally be over and we can begin to understand what we have seen.
This is the rhythm of presence and absence, of continuity and discontinuity. It is an essentially musical aspect of life. In the words of Ferruccio Busoni:
That which, within our present-day music, most nearly approaches the essential nature of the art, is the Rest and the Hold (Pause). Consummate players, improvisers, know how to employ these instruments of expression in loftier and ampler measure. The tense silence between two movements—in itself music, in this environment—leaves wider scope for divination than the more determinate, but therefore less elastic, sound.
Busoni, F. (1907). Entwurf einer neuen Ästhetik der Tonkunst. Trieste: Schmidl; trans. by Theodore Baker as Sketch of a New Esthetic of Music. New York: G. Schirmer, 1911.
Music is an art-form which is fundamentally made of the tension between presence and absence; the craft of music lies in learning how to control this relationship. Busoni’s reference to the silence between movements is especially interesting to me, as I recently attended a few concerts at this year’s proms, where I have noticed a tendency for audiences to clap between the movements. My intention here is not to pass judgement one way or the other on the debate about whether audiences should be discouraged or encouraged to do this, but simply to observe that, in clapping, the audience fills the silence during which a movement may be considered as single contiguous entity, and therefore they resist the process of signification which would otherwise occur.
This all reminds me of the many covid lockdowns which occurred in 2020 and 2021. These lockdowns were, for those of us who were not key workers, a kind of extreme silence: an extended period of absence disrupting the continuity of life and changing the nature of life’s rhythms. These were extremely significant times, during which we became far too familiar with our own company. We sought to fill our lives with with zoom calls, Netflix binges and, yes, applause (clap for the NHS, anyone?). This was a defensive resistance to signification, for we were naturally terrified of things which could have been signified had we allowed the silence to creep in for too long.
Psychoanalyst Ludovica Grassi highlights the essentially musical foundations of our lives. This kind of rhythm has been present with us since at least our births, if not before.
The elements of continuity that make up the foundations for the homeostasis of the foetus’s organism are interrupted at birth: the rhythm of meals replaces the continuous flow of nutritive substances through the umbilical cord; so does the rhythm between sucking and swallowing …; the provision of oxygen previously supplied by … the mother must now be obtained by an autonomous respiratory system …; the continuous and reassuring sound of the mother’s heartbeat gives way to the newborn’s autonomous cardiac activity
Grassi, L. (2021). The Sound of the Unconscious: Psychoanalysis as Music. Abingdon: Routledge.
Our life is segmented by rhythm, and it is only this segmentation which allows us to divide our lives into chunks which allow for easy signification. Thus, the power of music: in controlling this flow of signification via rhythm, a musician works with one of the most fundamental and primal parts of our human experience.
Anyway, I think it’s time for me to go and watch Match of the Day to find out what Gary Lineker thinks this result signifies for Newcastle’s season.
James Waide 