While going on a little walk yesterday, “Space Oddity” by David Bowie somehow became lodged in my mind. I tried to get it out by singing it, but it occurred to me that the lyrics simply would not come. I couldn’t remember them, as I hadn’t listened to the song in months! How did this song get stuck in my head?
Actually, the answer is easy enough: I began reading Samantha Harvey’s Orbital, a literary examination of a day floating above the earth in a space station. There have been no direct references to “Space Oddity,” but both the topic and the tone of the text must have brought Bowie’s song to mind.
It’s funny how this happens. We say a series of words, observe a scene, or read something, and the content that comes to us is not our own: it is a song written by others. Of course, the beauty of music is that it becomes our own through associations with our lives. We develop ownership of it, and it becomes akin to film scores.
Music is able to touch on what cannot be said, and that gives it emotive resonance that other art forms do not. Admittedly, most popular music today relies heavily on lyrics, and the words spoken by the singer become our first point of association. But, at the same time, our understanding of music must not be restricted by lyrics. Vocals play a purpose, and they are hardly the most important one: rhythms, melody, harmony, texture, and specific sound quality are fundamental to putting together the affective story that music tries to tell (or that is interpreted by us, songwriter be damned).
What I love about “Space Oddity” is the sense of solitude that it embodies: the lyrics point to this, but so does the tempo, the drums, the quiet strumming of the guitar, the stylophone, the mellotron, the flute, and the strings. It is only by hearing them all together that we can connect with the nebulous ethereality of the song.
Outer space is lonely, Bowie’s tune is lonely, and so is Harvey’s Orbital. That is beautiful.
