I had a thought today as I continue reading Timothy Morton’s Dark Ecology.
He mentioned at one point getting lost in the dark forest and finding our way again, and I wondered how that pattern might be reflected in the common pop song structure.
Songs are built on this pattern of repetition and deviation — the deviation makes the repetition all the more sweet when it returns. I thought about how verses could be seen as straying off the forest path into a darker realm, and then the chorus comes in when we find the path again — let’s celebrate! We found the path!
Then I thought about the middle 8 — what some people also call “the bridge.” This is the part where we come across an entirely new melody and total deviation from all we’ve heard before. It’s at this point we’ve strayed so far off the woodland path that we’ve actually put ourselves in danger. We fight our way out (sometimes bridges in pop music end with a cry-out high note, think of Taylor Swift’s ‘Blank Space’) and the return to the chorus is hugely sweeter after that ordeal.
Another interesting thing is that the coda of pop songs is sometimes the combination of the chorus and the middle 8. Which gives the impression that the darkest part of our journey has also become an intrinsic part of it— in fact, it adds to the chorus: it imbues greater meaning and complexity, and adds to the bittersweet taste of the final sing-a-long. It’s like we’ve taken what we’ve learnt in the dark forest and applied it to our path.
Calling this place a “bridge” also makes me think of crossing over. Like a symbolic act of self-sacrifice in the hero’s journey which leaves them utterly transformed, but stronger than ever. Think about when Harry Potter decided to let himself be killed by Lord Voldemort. He crossed over to death, and then came back renewed to sing his final chorus, full of awareness about what lies on the other side of this existence.
Here’s a passage from Dark Ecology which reinforces this idea of how darkness and joy live inside each other, and we need that in order to create a world where the future is sustainable:
"within the melancholia is an unconditional sadness. And within the sadness is beauty. And within the beauty is longing. And within the longing is a plasma field of joy."
I think I could argue that this is a loop — lingering deep within joy itself is also sadness, which within lies joy, which within lies sadness, ad infinitum.