Got a Flame in My Heart

The array of music one listens to as a thirty-year-old man is usually not the same one listened to as a fourteen-year-old boy, nor as a six-year-old boy. Songs most often don’t remain the same. However, at any point in our lives, tastes are indications of something. As a teen, music becomes a litmus test of sorts, and having Led Zeppelin among the bands you love indicates something to others—it’s the basis for a conversation that runs deeper than the conversation at hand and deeper than the grooves on an LP. As a teen, if someone disliked Led Zeppelin or any other music that you might have liked, they were suspiciously different in some way. They might be allies, but they were not in your inner circle. As a Led Zeppelin fan, you may get along with a Garth Brooks fan, but there is some wedge between you. I believe this wedge has something to do with emotion.

Music lovers often talk about an “emotional song” or a “moody” band. On some primal level, we have an understanding of what these terms mean when we use them, but philosophers are supposed to be concerned with precision, and I want to unpack some of these loaded words. So, let’s attempt to wrap our minds around the mystique of unique musical experience that is Led Zeppelin.

I think it’s worthwhile to discuss what is happening in the emotional experience of the song “Black Dog,” as well as what we mean when we call Led Zeppelin (or any band, for that matter) “moody” and how this experience relates to the overall human experience. This will require me to talk about a few dead fellows and what they thought about these essential qualities of human experience. Stay close by, since the crypt we are about to enter is as cryptic and musty as the music that rises from it. You may even want to put on your copy of “Battle of Evermore” for this part.

There are many ways to discuss the subject of emotion. For instance, physiological explanations focus on the body’s physical responses to emotional stimuli. Similarly, neurological explanations describe the emotion in terms of chemical secretions and electronic impulses in the brain. In the context of evolutionary biology emotion might be discussed in terms of its role in developing the species. For our purposes, I intend to talk about the emotion from the perspective of phenomenology. This means that I will describe emotion from an experiential perspective.

Our first-hand experience of emotion is our primary mode of knowing it. That is, we listen to music, and it simply moves us in some way. We do not say to ourselves, “Man, my brain chemistry is really changing and synapses are firing in an intriguing sequence,” which would suggest some kind of direct knowledge of our own neurological events. No, without any reflection on our part, music affects our everyday experience, even if we are oblivious to the physiological and chemical happenings, which are the nuts and bolts behind our experience. So, discussing the physiological or neurological details is quite unlike discussing the actual experience of the emotion. One simple experience of Zeppelin is that it rocks, and we want to turn it up loud and bob our heads when we listen. A description of this and other emotional experiences is valuable in understanding how we connect with music subjectively. Yes, the brain chemicals and evolutionary functions are part of the story of emotion, but our subjective experience of emotion is a significant aspect, as well. The phenomenological approach to emotion is a means of describing what our cognitive and physiological processes feel like under emotional affectation. For the philosopher, after we’ve described various emotional experiences, we can extract concepts about our emotional experience and describe it carefully so that others can understand what we all feel—sort of an objective subjectivity. There are some rules about how to create such descriptions, but it’s easier to show you than to explain them. It’s a dance you learn by doing it. This is the phenomenological approach. Of course, since philosophers can’t agree on very much, there are several ways to do phenomenology, and different rules depending on who’s singing lead, but I’ll stick with just a couple of ways of doing it that got a lot of airplay back in the day. With me so far? Okay, let’s push on in search of the black dog . . .

We have a common understanding of the terms, “emotion” and “mood.” I’m going to be a little clearer and introduce a new term, affectivity. I’ve always marveled at the diversity of interpretations of “Stairway to Heaven,” and it’s arguable that there is value in artistic ambiguity. BUT, unlike lyrical interpretation, we all need to be on the same page here when we’re doing phenomenology. My goal is for what I say to register similarly with all of you. That said, think of affectivity as that vast set of mental and physical processes that make it possible for us to be moved in the way that we are moved by things like Led Zeppelin—or anything else, for that matter. Let me demonstrate: Say you’ve just walked out of the used bookstore with a pile of good, dusty hardbacks. You are sitting alone, outside the local coffee shop, perusing the used copy of Schopenhauer you just bought. You’ve got your headphones on, air drumming to “Levee Breaks,” in a thunderous state of trance. This compulsion to bob my head and air drum knows no bounds, public or not. Some chump walks up, asks what you’re listening to, then gets in your face, insults Jimmy Page’s guitar playing, and tells you that you’re lame for ever falling for the drivel of Led Zeppelin, claiming instead that Muddy Waters is far superior: “Led Zeppelin is such a derivative band. They constantly rip off blues licks. They can NEVER be authentic in the way that the people they rip off are.”

You hear all this, and instantly become moved to anger. You feel your face get hot. You are compelled to argue. Your Schopenhauer gets knocked to the ground as the argument heats up. Perhaps you even want to invoke the spirit of John Bonham and bring down the hammer of the gods upon this knucklehead, or at least some knuckles. You are ultimately affected by that person. Five minutes ago, you were in one affected state (remember the trance?), but NOW, this person is in your face, questioning your judgment of Bonzo as the musical equivalent of Thor, and you have transitioned to another affective state (a state of anger). Affectivity, then, broadly applies to this entire situation of being moved by something or someone, from one overall mental and physical state to another. Now, let’s wake the dead and discuss emotion and mood, both of which fall under the umbrella of affectivity.

Muddying the Waters

Jean-Paul Sartre (1905–1980) was a phenomenologist, approaching the emotions through first-hand accounts of these experienced phenomena. In The Emotions: Outline of a Theory, he speaks of the emotions as unreflective ways in which we relate to objects in the world.³⁴ He says “unreflective,” because becoming angry with the Muddy Waters-partisan required no reflection. Emotion just happens to us, overtakes us. We need not reflect or think about the situation, we are simply affected. In this case, we find ourselves becoming angry because our taste is insulted. The idea that we “become” angry towards a person or thing is significant to Sartre. The drastic change in how we might view the Muddy Waters-partisan pre and post anger prompts Sartre to refer to our emotions as having “magical” qualities. It seems bizarre to call emotion “magical,” but think of how affectivity changes when you listen to the songs “Black Dog” and “Going to California,” back to back. This change alters your affective state. Your emotional orientation towards Led Zeppelin’s music changes from song to song. You are moved differently. Why? And why so quickly? It’s just noises, disturbances of the air in the vicinity of your ear. Why should that alter your whole mood? It seems like magic.

Sartre also focuses on the fact that emotion has to do with particular objects. That is, we’re not just angry, but rather, we’re angry at a particular thing. In the example above, our emotions are directed at the Muddy Waters-partisan (who should get out of our face if he knows what’s good for him). This person is what Sartre would call the intentional object of our anger. For Sartre, the emotions affect how we think of the object. So, each emotional event is directed at a particular object. In this case, the object is the Muddy Waters-dude, who has a shrinking life expectancy. I mean, it’s pretty weird, right? I made him up and I’m actually pissed off at him. And if you come along and ask me a question right now, I may transfer all that animus to you, so stay clear until I finish this part. The point is that an intentional object can be something right in front of me, or it can be something I’m imagining, since I have an image either way, and that’s really the object that corresponds to my affectivity.

Our emotional apprehension of an object can change with the slightest twist. So, imagine again that your favorite band has just been vehemently insulted in the most heinous way, your artistic taste called into question by some cajoling stranger. Can you picture the stranger? Try to imagine being offended in such a situation, envisioning precisely those words you could not handle some clown saying about your band. But now, what if the Muddy Waterslover is . . . a beautiful woman? I’ll bet that changed your emotion toward the scenario, didn’t it?! What’s more, as she insults your music, her alto voice coolly washes over you in warm waves with dizzying authority and cinnamon gum on her breath. She tells you that regardless of the fact that she finds Zeppelin inferior, she still finds you irresistibly sexy, AND she just bought a new summer dress in which she wants to meet you for dinner, AND she gives you an address and phone number. God, she smells good, and you love her half-smile and how the edges of her mouth make the slightest wrinkle. Without another word, she whips around, her hair kicking up like a black skirt on a flamenco dancer. In one fluid motion, she walks away, leaving you in the phantom-wake of her perfume, with no choice but to watch her put one shapely leg in front of the other until she’s out of sight. As you trace the outline of each step, it takes every ounce of will to keep your mouth closed. That was magic, no? How quickly an offensive git can be transformed into a ravishing woman. Since you have a few days until you get to meet her again, go ahead and gather yourself. You happen to press “play” on your iPod just in time to hear the prenoise of “Black Dog.” You pick your Schopenhauer up off the ground, and before Plant wails, you can’t help but notice Jimmy Page’s mysterious, dizzying sound is reminiscent of the fixed daze you are now in.

Hey, Hey, Mama, Say the Way You Mood

Before all of this happened, even before you had put on your headphones, you were sitting there, maybe even minding your own business, but probably not. Judging by the fact that you like Led Zeppelin, you probably picked your table for its vantage point, and you’d already been checking out the “talent” coming in and out of the café. You just weren’t yet angry at anyone. You weren’t yet in the emotional state brought on by “Levee Breaks.” That doesn’t mean you were devoid of all affectivity. Your mental and physical processes are such that they ALWAYS have an affective condition. Every object in your world, everything you see, touch, taste, hear, and even the thoughts you have are affected by emotion. The particular way in which your world is for you at any given moment is what Martin Heidegger (1889–1976) calls your mood. According to him, we are always in some kind of mood; that is, we are never moodless.³⁵

Heidegger talked a bit about the mood of Angst, and he said moods provide our orientation toward death or “non-being.” One gets the impression that he may even have actually invented the “pissy” mood, but that’s just a bit of history in any case. Heidegger was not renowned for his social skills. For our purposes, we know what we mean by saying we are in a “good mood.” Everything in our world seems better, and there’s a pervasive “goodness” about all the people, places, and thoughts we encounter. Coffee tastes particularly good, traffic doesn’t bother us nearly as much, the air smells sweeter. Moods change the quality of all things that you might experience. Mood is the affective veil through which everything is filtered. Now we understand basic notions of mood, such as “good mood” or “fearful mood,” but I think that there are perhaps infinite variations of moods that we slip in and out of. For example, there’s a slight difference between worrying about something and fretting about it. It’s easy to step over the line of worrying and into fretting (which has the sense of being pointless or excessive worrying, given the object). Life rarely appears to us in static form—that is, our moods change, and we have the possibility of more-or-less infinite varieties. There may be seventeen shades of affectivity between worrying and fretting that don’t even have names. There might be eighteen; or a hundred. As individuals we experience a multitude of moods, and these peculiarities are difficult to pin down in words. That is, it’s really hard to name what kind of mood we’re in, other than a few easy ones like “good” or “bad.” I think really popular music, like Led Zeppelin, embodies particular moods that cannot be expressed by one simple adjective. There’s a close kinship between my “Black Dog” mood and my “Whole Lotta Love” mood, and they are closer to each other than either is to my “Going to California” mood, but it isn’t easy to state why. I expect you get my drift, though. And our moods shift and vary within the course of a single tune.

What does it mean, then, to say that Led Zeppelin, as a whole, has a mood about it? It makes sense, vaguely, to say that, I’m sure. It means that the music of Led Zeppelin conveys a certain way of experiencing the world, in general. In some sense, their music comes at the world in its own way. The sounds and lyrics of Led Zeppelin convey a particular way of being in the world. Similar to when you wake up and find yourself in, say, a bad mood, the music of Bonham, Plant, Page, and Jones finds itself in a unique mood, a mood that we can make sense of with enough experience. These fellows may not have been explicitly aware of the mood they created as they were creating it, but they probably felt it, lent their own individual experience to the mood through their respective contributions to the music. There IS such a thing as the Zeppelin mood, and it is made manifest by the way that these young men collectively created noise. This noise has a particular stylistic direction, and it conveys a mood more so than it conveys any particular message. You see, good popular music—from Beethoven to Led Zeppelin—has much greater power to articulate moods than language alone. When we reach for the iPod, we are reaching for an altered mood, and we know what range of moods are available to us when Led Zeppelin appears in the menu, even if we can’t fully describe it.

So, my point is that music can articulate specific moods, but also general and vague ones. When we listen to Led Zeppelin, we identify with the mood of these songs. Through every sound, every strike of the drum, every wail and whimper, we identify with and validate the general mood of Led Zeppelin. So, how would we begin to describe and characterize those qualities that make a Zeppelin mood with which we identify?

Gonna Make You Burn, Gonna Make You Sting

“Black Dog” is a great title for a song, in that these words alone conjure an image and embody a mood. Paired with the music and lyrics the title can occasion all sorts of imaginings. For our purposes, we’re going to focus on how the Zeppelin mood deals with sexuality, as sexuality is certainly a focal theme in many Zeppelin songs. In the technical terms discussed, we’re figuring out how the Zeppelin mood affects the view of an intentional object, namely a woman. Put another way, the affectation in regard to women in “Black Dog” is a particular emotional instance of the Zeppelin mood.

With regard to women, in many of Zeppelin’s songs, and certainly in “Black Dog,” the emotion is one that growls, prowls, pounds, and salivates. I’m fairly certain the black dog of the title is meant to refer to the woman that leaves the character Plant creates. But I’m also convinced it’s the other way around, as the band becomes more wolf-like with every note they play. Plant never so much as utters the words “black dog,” during the tune, but the black dog is there. You can hear the pant and snarl. You can hear the dominance. You can hear him put one paw on his bitch as he sings during the breaks: “Oh, baby, oh baby, pretty baby, tell you what, you do me now.”

In between verses, the instrumental rhythm bludgeons and bruises with each accent. It’s really no wonder parents considered this music subversive. This is not Muddy Waters’s “Mannish Boy.” No, this is sexual pathos of a canine variety, and it comes in the night, when all you can see are its white fangs and the reflections in its eyes. That’s one aspect of what we feel when we listen. This music is a derivative of blues, but it’s altogether different in its mood. Muddy Waters may have cursed women in his songs, but with every cracking of Bonham’s snare, the mood of Led Zeppelin gives them a whipping that burns and stings. It presses the edges of both our bodies and our imaginings. We quietly wonder: “Am I allowed to feel this way? Is this a sin?”

Big-legged Woman Ain’t Got No Soul

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) could have very easily been Led Zeppelin’s manager, as he had business in his bones, as well as a very “Black Dog-ish” emotional affectation when it came to women, evidenced by his essay appropriately entitled “On Women.” His prevailing mood seemed to be a misanthropic one, rather than a predatory one, and his social skills were such as to make Heidegger seem like the very picture of graciousness. Schopenhauer says, “Only a male intellect clouded by the sexual drive could call the stunted, narrow-shouldered, broad-hipped and short-legged sex the fair sex: for it is with this drive that all its beauty is bound up.”³⁶ This animalistic desire to sweat and groove, Schopenhauer believes, is man’s will driven by man’s biological nature and not owing to the reality of a woman’s beauty. To hear Schopenhauer tell the tale, women are essentially devoid of beauty, and, due to their all-pervading vanity they are incapable of even recognizing it. Makes you wonder what that says about the men that women choose, eh?

Before you sits the used copy of Essays and Aphorisms by Schopenhauer, and apparently, a woman had owned it, because in the particular essay, “On Women,” there were some rather “colorful” remarks after each paragraph, written in what seems to be a woman’s handwriting.³⁷ Together with the comments, the essay reads similarly to the story in “Black Dog.” There is certainly insight to be gained from the parallels:

SCHOPENHAUER: One needs only to see the way she is built to realize that woman is not intended for great mental or for great physical labour. (p. 80)

COMMENTATOR: In a man’s world, pig.

SCHOPENHAUER: Women are suited to being the nurses and teachers of our earliest childhood precisely because they themselves are childish, silly and short-sighted, in a word big children, their whole lives long . . . (p. 81)

COMMENTATOR: Large pig.

SCHOPENHAUER: In the girl, nature has had in view what could in theatrical terms be called a stage-effect: it has provided her with super-abundant beauty and charm for a few years at the expense of the whole remainder of her life . . . for just as the female ant loses its wings after mating, since they are then superfluous . . . so the woman also loses her beauty . . . (p. 81)

COMMENTATOR: Oh, fuck you, Schopenhauer!

SCHOPENHAUER: They are sexus sequior, the inferior sex in every respect: one should be indulgent towards their weaknesses, but to pay them honour is ridiculous beyond measure and demeans us even in their eyes. (p. 86)

COMMENTATOR: Prick! I’m glad you had no wife or children.

Zing! Schopenhauer is said to have had a few lovers, but I think it’s safe to say that the notches on his bedpost were nowhere near the number of even a Zeppelin roadie. Similarly, Schopenhauer was accused of assaulting a woman and lost a lawsuit, requiring him to pay her a monthly sum of money until her death. Regardless, Schopenhauer ends up alone, and his essays can be perceived as either actual philosophy or affected rationalizations of his own biases—or both. Similarly, after all the virile gyrations, somehow Plant’s character in “Black Dog” gets cleaned out by this woman and ends up alone, too. She steals his car and wallet and leaves his bills and heart on the floor. This affectation doesn’t seem to be working out for either of these fellas. Sounds like the women win, right?

According to Schopenhauer, this is precisely what women do. They use men as instruments for their own well-being, for their own ends and for the propagation of the species. They do this naturally, he believes, and he feels that their very nature is parasitic. Plant’s character in “Black Dog” is left out to dry, as well, so now he’s holding out for a “steady rollin’ woman.” Schopenhauer doesn’t believe such a thing exists, and if you take into account the lyrics of “Livin’ Lovin’ Maid,” it’s difficult to believe that Plant is concerned with finding such a thing, either: “Livin, lovin, it’s just a woman,” right?

You’ve been listening to Zeppelin, yelling along even. Three days have passed and it’s time to meet your new lady friend, the one who muddied your waters. So, what are you going to do with your own black dog? Part of you wants you to bear your canines, but something tells you that dogs can be dangerous? Inevitably, you check your watch, read the address again....

Steady Rollin’ Woman Gonna Come My Way

So, there you are, standing outside the door, waiting anxiously for your date. By now, you’ve had several phone conversations, and you know she is a neurologist. She actually loves Led Zeppelin and Muddy Waters. She’s intent on making her own way in the world, but she’s also interested in what you do and likes that you’re intent on your making your own way. She’s not so fond of Schopenhauer. She’ll let you hold the door, but only if you let her pay the bill this time. She enjoys her femininity as an aspect of her personhood, just as she enjoys wrapping her small arm around your big one as you walk down the street after dinner. Her only proviso for the date is that you exchange 6-song mix CDs.

Yours: 1. “Black Dog,” Led Zeppelin, just to be cheeky, and because it rocks. 2. “Blackbird,” to continue with the black theme, and because this song is an airier mood of mysterious hope. 3. “Black Eyed Dog,” Nick Drake, still on the black theme, because you can tell she likes the rain, as well as rainy day music. 4. “Oh What a Beautiful Morning,” Ray Charles and Count Basie, because it just feels like the giddiness of a new day, and she needs to know you dig soul. 5. “Hatienne Cherie,” Angus Martin, because there’s nothing like a love song sung in French and stylistically performed reggae-style. Show her you’re worldly and that you may want to say nice things to her, but you’re subtle and intelligent enough to say it in another language, at least for now. 6. “Galway Girl,” Steve Earle’s version of a traditional Irish song, because she’s Irish, feisty, and because he sings, “Her hair is black and her eyes are blue.”

You see, there is something significant about how we connect to musical moods. If we actually care about music, our music collections become representations of the moods that strike chords within us. We identify with uncountable varieties of moods. Our identification also changes as we change. From youngster to teen to adult, I passed from cassette to CD, CD to iTunes, and my music collection changed. Where I once owned every Guns-n-Roses bootleg, now I have only a few songs in my collection. “Thriller” is in there, because it grooves, but I no longer re-enact the zombie video, as I did as a five-year-old. CSNY’s “Our House” is there, because there is something I love about seeing new flowers in a vase, because I was fond of it as a child, and because I’m still my mother’s son.³⁸ Harry Nilsson’s “Coconut” is there, because sometimes there’s no other explanation for life than it’s surreal—best to have a good laugh. After all, mixing a lime with a coconut seems to be as good an answer as any to life’s woes, sometimes. Led Zeppelin “IV” is there, too, along with many, many other varieties of mood. These moods partly manifest my own emotional understanding and connection to our world.

Now, I’m not a teenage boy anymore. I am a father, and nothing can make you reflect about the female experience quite like having a daughter. The care put into raising little girls also lends some keen insight when it comes to the male-female relationship. After all, every woman is somebody’s daughter. I said earlier that I would never want my daughter marrying someone with only Led Zeppelin in their iPod. I think now you know why that is, and I think most anyone in their right mind would agree. Mood manifests itself in every personal relationship in our lives, and our musical tastes reflect our spectrum of moods and thus can indicate certain truths about us. It is a good exercise in practical ethics to judge whether you’re good enough to marry someone’s daughter—whether or not your spectrum of moods would be conducive to having a life with someone’s daughter. In fact, since most of you reading this aren’t women, this exercise is a great moral benchmark for self-improvement. So, now, knowing what I know, let me turn the benchmark against myself, and, as a father, ask of the three males here (Schopenhauer, Plant/Zeppelin, me): who is worth marrying?

Tell Me No Lies, Make Me a Happy Man

Despite the radical tone of both Schopenhauer and Zeppelin, they’re both like train wrecks, in that you just can’t look away. They are mesmerizing, powerful, and dangerous. In the case of Schopenhauer, we have the luxury of looking at the intellectual accomplishments of women in contemporary society to elucidate his ignorance. Despite this, it’s hard not to marvel at this train jumping its track through the course of his essay. From our own affected place in the world, there’s a certain pleasure we get as the train cars begin spilling old European notions of sexual roles. Interestingly, Schopenhauer actually says a few things about the female of the species that hold to this day regarding normative differences in cognitive styles; however, Schopenhauer’s mood is such that he portrays these differences as instances of superiority/inferiority, when, at the end of the day, it seems that biological differences in men and women correspond to one another symbiotically.

It’s said that Schopenhauer’s mother was dismissive of him. She was a literary figure of the time, as well, and it has been postulated that she drove his father to suicide. The truth of the details isn’t that important here. What is important is that one’s affectivity has bearing on one’s opinions. Even the all-objective philosopher, standing above the river and observing “true reality” could scarcely shake being human. To be human means to have affectivity, to have your own particular orientation towards all the possible objects in the world. I beg you to wonder about MY affectivity—and anyone else’s, for that matter. Consequently, I would certainly not want my daughter marrying Schopenhauer.

As for Zeppelin, this is another primal force that we just can’t seem to part with, for one reason or another. Perhaps at some level we accept that masculinity entails some predatory impulse, or perhaps it’s because we just can’t part with air-drumming, Zeppelin has some quality that gives them staying power. I’m inclined to think it has something to do with their distinct mood. That mood is certainly radical, decisively male, and not very conducive to marriage and raising a family. I know what rock-’n’-rollers do for fun, and it often results in a necessary penicillin shot. Unless you’re Yoko and John or Paul and Linda, chances are slim that you’ll stay out of the National Inquirer for some salacious scandal. Most rockers write love songs for at least half a dozen women. I will not give my marital blessing for such a small probability that my daughter is a rocker’s last hurrah. Ramblin’ men are generally not good sons-in-law.

Now, knowing the pains of and worries of a father, based on my own mood mix, would I be willing to endorse myself as a viable candidate for a suitor? I mean, that IS a great mix. It’s got plenty of diversity. There’s charm, and care, and thought, all good qualities, and it’s got enough testosterone to produce some grandbabies (though it sometimes makes me dizzy to think of such things). Hmmm, . . . Ultimately, I think I need to witness several more mixes and know several more moods before I could ever (if ever I could) make that decision. I suppose I’ll just have to do my best to raise a daughter who will both listen to her father’s (perhaps) prudent advice and develop her own intellect, independence, and judgment when it comes to such crucial matters. Luckily, I have a few years to go before I have to worry about the black dog coming for her. The one pressing matter is what my lady friend’s father thinks of my mix.