This semester, I’ve found myself getting kicked in the head in mosh pits for the sake of ethnographic fieldwork. I’m currently working on a research project about how women find a sense of belonging in the city of Pomona’s hardcore music. In the study’s first few interviews, I was frustrated with my respondents’ accounts of heartbeats synchronizing in the mosh pit and the “earth-shattering” feeling of love among a mass of punching bodies. Seeking out monologues about how people use community to combat America’s alienation, I was met instead with spiritual accounts of tenderness.
I began to wonder: Can the meaning of the music we love be boiled down to the beating of our hearts in unison? To the benefit of both my personal inquiry and sociological research, I offer a tentative yes.
To grapple with this question, I turn to Lou Reed’s 1972 classic, “Perfect Day.” This track has been popularly interpreted as narrating a day in the life of a heroin user, or alternately describing the rosier moments of a failing relationship. For years, the song lingered in the back of my mind (and in a multitude of film soundtracks) without much emotional weight. At best, it was a foundational piece of the contemporary pop music canon. At worst, it was another weepy, piano-driven song about addiction.
From a technical perspective, the charm of “Perfect Day” lies in how unassuming and understated it begins. In the lead-up to the song’s first chorus, Reed starts to describe his day in an almost-whisper, speaking over a thin piano instrumental. Drinking in the park, feeding zoo animals, seeing a film, nothing particularly striking. But then, the achingly sweet orchestral accompaniment swells towards the chorus, like a ghostly chill cast over a room. The song becomes addictive, the piano uplifted by soaring violins, while cracks in Reed’s voice stitch the symphony together into something utterly human. Drug-fueled escapist fantasy or not, “Perfect Day” is wholly delectable.
Reed’s masterpiece entered my life in a quaint pub in Glasgow two Novembers ago. I was talking with my mother when the chorus crept in, bringing our conversation to a momentous pause:
Oh, it’s such a perfect day
I’m glad I spent it with you
Oh, such a perfect day
You just keep me hanging on
I do not remember the words exchanged before and after Reed’s intrusion into our dinner, but I can perfectly recall my watery eyes and the cinematic tears that streamed down my mom’s face. In the moment, the song made for an uncannily perfect soundtrack to what was, in fact, a perfect day. I was immensely glad to have spent the day with my mother, traversing a foreign land, growing our collection of new stories gained from interactions with kind strangers.
As convenient, and ego-nourishing, as it is to wrestle with art on the plane of the impersonal, raw corporeal reactions — happy tears, shivers, a quickened pulse — prompt us to feel greater responsibility for others.
The emotional tension of Reed’s closing line, “you’re going to reap just what you sow,” were irrelevant as I sat in front of a crackling fireplace after a day of wandering one of the world’s most beautiful cities, chatting with my mother (who, it should go without saying, I love very much).
This night now gleefully haunts my analysis of “Perfect Day.” No longer does the irony of a perfect day achieved through intoxication take center stage in my mind. There’s a bit of guilt that emerges from my personal connection to the track, though. I feel as though I’m disrespecting Reed’s artistic process with my stunted skill for properly comprehending the song. How could I, an amateur proponent of historical materialism and a terribly judgy music listener, recall simple, happy memories of a track with such sorrowful contradictions? How could I have fallen victim to post-modern meaninglessness, just like all the people I resent for doing exactly that?
I reel myself back in by remembering film director David Lynch’s steadfast conviction that his art was meant to provoke emotion rather than to be read and analyzed for a specific narrative. Lynch famously refused to disclose the meaning of his surrealist works, forcing the viewer to feel for themself, to stay in touch with the beating of their heart and the associations that freely emerge in response to his work.
In his 2006 film “Inland Empire,” for example, we are dragged through frightening, labyrinthine hallways and shocked by bright white lights. The viewer follows an increasingly disoriented actress through a nightmarish film production process, and is left to figure out the intricacies of the horror for themself. Lynch envisions art’s function as a catalyst for emotion in the consumer. Art makes you vulnerable to the feelings lingering just below the surface of your consciousness, suppressed by cold analysis and productive responsibility.
As convenient, and ego-nourishing, as it is to wrestle with art on the plane of the impersonal, raw corporeal reactions — happy tears, shivers, a quickened pulse — prompt us to feel greater responsibility for others. In contact with the human sensations that tie us together, we are taken from our existence as productive machinery and moved toward a greater sense of care and collectivity. This care is picking up others in the mosh pit, crying with your mom and grasping for a friend after a jump scare.
As hardcore musicians are strung together by their heartbeats in sync with the aggressive beating of drums, my mom and I are strung together by a memory of the sweet string accompaniment of “Perfect Day.” And maybe that’s as far as my analysis needs to go for now.
Chloe Mossey PO ’29 is currently discovering the world of bad German-language YouTube soap operas and rediscovering the music of Death Grips. She highly recommends both.