Theme Songs for the Ordinary Man
The movies otherwise hold up a perfect mirror to ordinary life – just perfect – but in one respect they spread it on a little thick; this is in the matter of the music accompanying the narrative.
There is a lot of music in the movies, in fact the scores are said to run to 800 pages and more, and this is on your ordinary hour-and-a-halfer, not the 105-part multi-year epic playing down at the local cinema.
This comes in handy to the anxious moviegoer who, for some inexplicable reason likely rooted in childhood, would just as soon his cinema experience not include the heads of characters being lopped off just when you have gotten used to them, both the characters and their heads; perfectly suitable bodies being turned inside out by the force of the vacuum in space outside their frail rocket capsule when a character steps outside for a stroll; eyeballs popping out like buttons off the starched shirt of a man in an animated cartoon who has overfed at a feast and has just leaned back in his chair; adventurous young adults who insist on checking out the local haunted house and, as the movie progresses, come into contact with more and more farm implements; and I know I have mentioned it before but other characters turned inside out by various curses and demonic entities; and I know I have mentioned it twice now, still other characters turned inside out by aliens invading from outer space.
For this type of moviegoer, it is a mercy at these times to be in the lobby, at the concession stand, wandering among the arcade games, looking out the lobby window pretending to be recalling just where the car is parked, examining the posters along the hallway advertising upcoming movies, anything but actually in his seat in the theater, for the length of time it takes for the scary part of the movie – to give it its technical name – is over with.
Well before the first drop of blood drips from the ceiling or the first spleen or appendix makes an appearance, this person has emptied his seat and is in safe territory.
How did he know?
The music told him.
Some minutes, sometimes mere seconds before the carnage and mayhem start to fly, the orchestra playing in the background will dip into deep, ominous notes, or high shrill notes, or some combination of the two, which tell as clear as can be, “now is the time to scram; you better get while the getting is good.”
And, as we have said, you do.
A quick word to your companion, the discreet exit from the seat and the row, the trek up the carpeted aisle, a push through the back door, and your mind and spirit and soul for the rest of the day and indeed for the rest of your life will remained unencumbered by the scene where the one ghoul extracts various bones from the victim without benefit of anesthesia, and munches on them with obvious delight, as though he is in a commercial for a very specialized fast food restaurant.
How we could use this device in ordinary life!
We do not face these life and death circumstances when we approach the top of the basement stairs of this certain haunted house that has the interesting characteristic, or interior decorating accent you might say, of blood running down the walls at certain times of the clock strike, and deciding, ‘maybe I can get a snack down there! Graham crackers and fresh whole milk, or some cheese and saltines would get me over the hump until breakfast,” which then prompts the discordant chords in the orchestra and the shrieking violins and what not.
But we do, say, walk into boardrooms for a big presentation.
You are filling in for the boss who is traveling, and who has transferred to your thumb drive the presentation you are to deliver, a dry treatise on the growth of days sales outstanding in Accounts Receivables and how the various offices will need to exercise a little elbow grease in this matter before things get completely out of hand.
He, this boss, has taken your thumb drive that you have handed him, put it in his computer, transferred the copy from his computer to your thumb drive, and handed it back to you. His manner, if not his words – OK, his words too – convey that even you could not mess this up. Just stand there at the front of the room, look at the stupid slides, say what’s on them, and then sit down.
Child’s play.
What’s interesting is that on this same thumb drive you, who consider yourself a not-bad artist, not bad at all, have also put together a series of slides showing caricatures of the board members in various cartoon-like scenarios.
There are scenes where this one fellow has steam coming out his ears, another where one of the women is dressed in flapper garb and is swinging a long stretch of pearls around, and well, just any number of humorous setups that you mean one day, after you leave this job, to show to a few of your closest friends.
Nothing malicious in the least! But your opinion is that anyone of a certain breadth of face should not grow a bushy moustache if he does not want to be pictorially compared to a walrus at some point in his career.
It is one drollery upon another in these caricatures and long have you chuckled over them, thankful that you have this talent but also thankful that you have them all safely in one place.
On this thumb drive.
How much different your life would be now if, as you walked up to the computer they have at the front of the boardroom, one you have in truth never exactly understood how to work, and loaded the presentation – not the one with days sales outstanding but the one with the walrus and the flapper and the ear-steam caricatures – the orchestra would have struck up, for you only, a kind of banshee wail, as if the violins had suffered a collective nervous breakdown and the rest of the instruments were trying out for sides in a civil war?
Would it not have stayed you hand and make you say to yourself, “best to make sure you load the right presentation, young sir, best many times over. Take great care with this step.”?
Or, having finally worked up the courage to propose to your long-time object of adoration you go down on one knee, say the prescribed words, open a small box of the type that jewelry comes in, and show her proudly the neatly printed note you have slaved over that says, ‘IOU a big ring once I get a real job and make some money.”
Low ominous rumblings in the double basses as you drove up to her house could have saved you the scene that followed and made you reconsider whether this is the time for ironic comment on a capitalist society gone mad or if it calls for a more straightforward presentation of an emblem of love.
Later in life as you and your offspring fill out applications to various colleges and you decide to, what the hell, throw one the way of the craziest most expensive school you have ever heard of, how much less poverty-stricken would your follow-on life have been if only the piccolos had wailed shrilly before you put the stamp on. The theme from Jaws would not have been out of place as you walked the letter down the street to the mailbox. They couldn’t accept her if she never applied, right? That’s what the gloomy theme music would be telling you.
And if these background musicians are to be thanked for giving us a heads-up regarding these and other various situations, they are absolutely to be thrown parades for quickly and easily giving us a shorthand read on this or that characters’ character.
If people walked around with theme music accompanying them, as we learned was the ordinary way in grade school visits to the orchestra to see Peter and the Wolf, each of which characters had their own musical theme, we could quickly scram if the man approaching us with some paperwork in his hands had a busybody musical theme that conveyed his job at the IRS, or politely shut the door when the handyman coming up the walkway to give you a bid on the hot water heater is accompanied by a gloomy, soul-wrenching theme at the lowest depths of the violas and cellos. A fine person no doubt, but you prefer a more cheerful type when it comes to looking at your equipment or appliances, not one who clearly wonders what the whole point of the universe is anyway.
Entire books are written on the art of quickly getting a read on people as you first meet them, when the whole matter could be easily settled by having an orchestra on every corner playing their theme song as they approached.
