Fractal Memories, Music, and Sense of Place: How Smashing Pumpkins Teach me About Architecture
Pallasmaa and the embodied memory of sound
I came with this idea while I listened to Smashing Pumpkins song titled 1979. When I closed my eyes, there’s some kind of vivid image appeared inside my head; a place where a weird narration occurs. There’s a narrative-play took place inside my mind, flew me to a certain familiar but rather unrecognizable place.
“we don’t even care, to shake the zipper blue~…”
As far as I can remember, I’ve never been there before. The scene suddenly changed and the sun started to shine more brightly, along with the song’s hammering riffs. Then came along a boy with a red balloon in his hand asking me to walk him away.
“Faster than the speed of sound, faster than we thought we’d go..~”
As the riffs ended, and the bridge banging’, the boy stopped and sit under the canopy of somebody’s house. As I recall, it was a yellow house with a glittering red roofs, under a blue bright sky.
It’s funny somehow, the way an insignificant daily interaction with things can take us to somewhere unexpected (not literally). Like this Smashing Pumpkins tune that made me wander my mind. The power of music does make us embody our state of being, connect us with our distanced sense of place.
Basically, my entire life has been devoted as a music hooligans. Summat out of nowhere, even when in the moment of silence, the music still playing subtly, along with my silent hums and a tapping in my feet and toes.
Smashing Pumpkins’s jam could really take me somewhere that I never experienced before. What is the explanation behind this phenomena?
To discuss this matter, I would rely hard on Juhani Pallasmaa writings, especially the eye of the skin (1995) and the thinking hand (2009)
Memory and Imagination
Pallasmaa, the Finnish architectural writer who is big in the phenomenology of architecture scene, once said that our memory is a collection of our perceptions and experiences (2009). It will be embodied through our body and could be put into action as a result of an embodied thinking (a process where body “think” and manifest an action based on embodied memory. Ex: muscle memory)
a Manifested Feeling; a Fractal Memories
Our body, explained by Pallasmaa, become a mediator of our self and the world. Our body’s sensorial organ strengthen our sense of self-existence by capturing the essence of the world and manifests it as a memory.
Memories stored not as a whole package, it come as a bunch of trimmed images. Those image structured in an abstract composition, just like an arsenal of weaponry. A collection of a fractal memories. It can be used when needed, both consciously and unconsciously (as an embodied thinking).
Those unconscious action not an out-of-nowhere reaction, but a causative reaction, a triggered effect, in this case of discussion, a song. (its finally getting somewhere)
Song and Sense of Place
Song could invoke a memory recalling based on its nature as a stimuli to human senses.
In the middle of some busy evening, while doing nothing, I listen to a song. In the night before I sleep, I play my midnight lullaby. Before I start a day, while eating my breakfast, I hear the music comes through my mind.
Music has become a language that speak to me. It has been rooted in my mind, vividly playing in my memory, automatically. That’s why humming become my daily routine. But that’s not the only thing that music does to me. Somehow it takes me to another realm of consciousness. It takes me “somewhere” I don’t even remember had been yet.
Just like a scent, a sound have a tight connection with a collective memory, including a place. In the case of song, each different song can carry a rich various message that could collapse in combination of each elements of the song. Our collective perception of a place, could be stored as a memory along with an embedded triggers to make it possible for a recall. Sometimes a song could be the trigger of this recalled space. It is possible because a structure of a song contain a complex elements of melody and lyrics that brought up a certain narrative content.
The condition could be flipped, in order to plant some kind of memory injection. We can take a look on the case of a movie soundtrack or score. A movie soundtrack or score can alleviate some scene in a movie, so it can deliver a right amount of emotion that the scene intended for the viewer.
The Smashing Pumpkins and the Definitely Indefinite
The Smashing Pumpkins, like many other 90’s youth band, carry a hard boiled melody with a touch of soft harmony as a juxtaposition, enriched by a rather relatable lyrics with not so literal that has an open ended meaning.
Tonight tonight from Mellon Collie and The Infinite Sadness (1995) album can be seen as another case study. First we have to break down the song into its parte. An intro, verse, chorus, bridge, and chorus
Started with a instrumental end it opens up an imagination of a latent context of a landscape. Then suddenly the bass took place and start to give a change in emotion but not so different that it still harmonize with the landscape. Somehow night turn the course of the day and starry sky begin to emerge.
The vibrant multi layers of the song bring up a complexity into the realm of space brought by memory. Its just like some kind of multi sensory phenomena occurs as the main instrument change and take a lead.
The verse begin when Billy Corgan start to put his sing. The cranky nature of its song begin to inject some kind of chaos in an orderly made context. An imagination of a crumble city begins to emerge. Suddenly the chorus banging and the crumbled building show its light that shine brighter but repeatedly dimmed along with Corgan cracking, consistently shift to a higher note.
The reflection of reality begin to appear and a festive house inside of the crumbling facade begins to appear. Its resonance with the cold wind that wheezing as the lyrics repeatedly sang. The complexity of transition from a rather silent beginning
The song could make me recall the place that has a huge contrast but with a sensible correlation that makes a harmonious impact to the story. From this I realize that chaos can be connected with a consistent part of a subtle feature that goes along. To tell a story with chaos, we have to accompany it with a rather soft feature, a natural thing or a nothingness. It can create a Duality that make us appreciate each conflicting part.
The sense of the place could be strengthen by the repetition of a “words of chorus” to invoke a recall memory to some kind of familiar embodied memory and to create a center of attention. Just like in their song “tonight tonight”, the words tonight repeatedly sang with gradually higher chords, creating a familiarity but provoke a complex-interpretation addition to narrative continuity.
Another Important thing is a transition. The song port could not stand out if there is no intro, or bridge after the chorus. a complex intro that the whole perception can sense the space constructed a background and context. The presence of the bridge create a sense of relax before goes to another complexity and chaos, but still carry a value of narrative even if not that dominating.
The lyrics, something that we can touch the meaning of, plays a rather important role to the whole narrative continuum. It stands as the element of space that could relate with us the most, such as haptic and retinal elements. But it doesn't have to be so lateral, that it can allow a space for the sense of personal involvement to give a whole continuum a meaning, a thing that ‘t somehow most of the architecture nowadays don’t let us do.
The definite indefinite
The Important lesson, to sum it up, lays on the importance of design depthness in term of contradiction and complexity. The element of contradiction adds-up the power of memory recall while complexity adds up a multi memory recall. Another important thing is providing a space for narrative involvement between user and the space itself.
To put this torturing experience of reading to an end, all I can say is, “What I choose, is what I choise~” (Disarm-Smashing Pumpkins)
Lets take it with a grain of salt.
