Circus Music

I was listening to an Erik Satie piano piece the other day - Je Te Veux, Valse - and at times it reminded me of circus music. The bouncing support of the left hand and the jaunty melody of the right, beyond evoking imagery of swirling Viennese couples, led me to a sense of life as a charade, an expression of the inherent absurdity of any human action. Though presented within the legitimate form of the waltz, I think this is what Satie intended us to hear.

This got me to thinking about the time signature, which is in three instead of four. There seems to be something about it which admits to a caricature of life. Edith Piaf's bitter verse accompanied by accordion, Jeff Buckley covering an old cabaret tune, or the soundtrack to Amelie - all chiming away in three. Maybe it's just French music and the French are fascinated with the absurd. Or maybe it's dance music and thus necessitates a certain amount of frivolous motion. But somehow I keep coming back to the circus.

Now when I was younger, the circus was fun to me. But as I aged I realized it had become such a hyperbolic event that I couldn't take it seriously. Consider all those oil paintings of a clown crying. Is the clown crying because his life is so sad, or because the painting is such a cliche?

At any rate, it seems that the circus has become a good metaphor for the spectacle of human life. Tamers are attacked by their lions, clowns scare everyone, and the acrobats are modern gypsies - it's great they do a traveling show and all but they'd better be gone by Monday. People even use the term to describe something which has gotten out of hand, e.g. media circus.

So when all of the gloss and serious intent is stripped of an event what is left behind? Melancholy. That is ultimately what the circus has to offer. Melancholy over what could have been, over a reality that has become tragicomic. Couched in the colors and bright lights, it is even more unbearable.

When composing the soundtrack to Boogie Nights, Chris Penn happened across an old electronic musical device that would allow you to play tape loops of pre-recorded sounds only with keys like on a piano (or an accordion.) He brought it to director P.T. Anderson to play some of the sounds for him. He chose a tune in three and Anderson was so taken by it that he decided to use it as the intro to the movie.

You hear it playing solo over a blank screen at the very beginning - this strangely mechanical but seemingly familiar instrument playing a sad waltz. Anderson thought it sounded like circus music and would underscore the conundrum of the character’s lives. It is wonderfully poetic, and I didn’t realize how powerful it was until I went back and watched the movie again. He also uses it at the end just prior to Dirk Diggler’s speech in front of the mirror.

Is this what Satie intended - that we should feel like Dirk Diggler in front of a mirror? Perhaps. I think the Stoics had it right with the concept that too much pleasure brings too much pain. Circus music is both at once, repeating in a cycle which mimics life. Aspiration leads to hope, then to joy, then to hubris, then to defeat and finally acceptance. Still life continues on, in that interminable 3/4 beat.