I, Too, Sing The Body Electric

A piece about electronic music¹, working out, and how it all relates to the soul

O my body!

I believe the likes of you are to stand or fall with the likes of
the soul, (and that they are the soul).

The thin red jellies within you, or within me—the bones, and the marrow in the bones,

The exquisite realization of health;

O I say, these are not the parts and poems of the Body only, but of the Soul,

O I say now these are the Soul!

–Walt Whitman, I Sing The Body Electric²

Yo te traigo música con electromagnetos

Para que muevas todo el esqueleto,

Música hecha con buena onda

Para que brinquen como popcorn de microondas.

–Calle 13, Electro Movimiento

I.

Electronica moves me …almost literally… like nothing else can. I plug my headphones into my iPod, put on my workout playlist, move to it, exercise to it. The music on that playlist gets me moving and keeps me going. Is it Hypnotism? Sit me in a chair, put that music on, and observe as I inevitably bob my head back and forth. Usually I would start dancing in my chair, but that privilege is reserved solely for moments of loneliness, for I have shame, in spite of what Yenny may say to the contrary. Jacqueline knows what I mean.

At the gym, doubtless I’ll have earbuds in my ears, wires down the side of my neck. That music! Ah, it gives me a strong impetus to continue as if the pounding rhythm demands another pushup, another lunge, another repetition, another step, lest my so called journey of a thousand miles end then and there if I throw in the towel.

Electronica is a sorcerer that galvanizes me; a mild dose of steroids injected in me; an emergency unleashing adrenaline in me; a defibrillator shocking and restoring the pulse in me. It is the fitness trainer I can’t afford yelling at me to get a few more reps in.

Numerous times have I tried working out to other types of music or to no music at all but to no avail, as if only Electronica can summon the energy to rise out of me. What is so special about it?   

Miguel, a first lieutenant in the army, tells me he has to memorize cadences to shout out while running with the rest of his platoon. He says calling cadences helps during runs. It forces you to regulate your breathing –a must, otherwise you’ll get winded and end prematurely, panting on the side of the road or the treadmill …in defeat. I’m not sure if it’s a man thing, but I’m not very fond of ending prematurely, panting in defeat.

What about for those not in the army, no fellow runners at their sides? Electronica to the rescue. No need for cadences to regulate breathing and pace. Breathing gets tied to the BEAT. Inhalation, exhalation are each chained to their appropriate musical bar. Each rep or step or whatever latches on to the BEAT when it has to.

Electronica, loud as it is, washes away whirring sounds from treadmills, ellipticals, stationary bikes, and clanging sounds from all sorts of resistance training machines.³ But above all else, ah, the joy of it. Electronica mitigates the “choriness” of the gym. It distracts me when I need to ignore the pain or helps me zone in when I need to focus on the burn. Varied as my beloved electronica is, it breaks the monotony of the exercise routine.

In my mind, electronica has become so powerfully associated with movement, so intertwined with bodily exertion of some kind that I have become one of Pavlov’s dogs to it. They hear the bell and salivate; I hear the music and innervate… then perspire. My physician has actually denied me access to this music during periods of illness and fatigue for fear that my inability to resist exercising will wreck my recovery.⁴

The primary pitfall for those wishing to maintain the workout routine is MOTIVATION, or rather the lack thereof. Rarely do I face that problem now. My motivation comes in through my ears, vibrates my mind and body, and radiates out through my limbs. Yes, conditioning is truly a powerful psychological tool.

O, friends, many feats have I accomplished whilst possessed by electronica that were once to me naught but unrealistic, out-of-reach goals:

A cursory set of examples:

• Surpassing the previous pushups-in-one-set record of 23 with 30 pushups while listening to “Rombo” by the Bloody Beetroots & Congorock. (1.15.11)
• Reducing my previous 3 mile run time from 35 minutes down to 29:50 while listening to “Christian Dior Denim Flow” & “Power (Remix)” both by Kanye West.  (3.31.11)
• Running a mile in 7 minutes, 46 seconds mile while listening to Lady Gaga’s “Judas” & “Just Dance.”  (4.25.11)
• Oh, and, of course, losing 70+lbs., listening to Electronica during virtually every workout.

I really do owe electronica my gratitude.

If “Music is the soundtrack of your life⁵” then

Electronica is the soundtrack to my weightloss, the score to my improving fitness.

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[1] A note on the term: I use Electronica as an umbrella term to include actual electronica as well as hip-hop, rap, reggaetón, pop, house, electro, techno, etc., the common element among them being their use of electronic musical instruments and electronic technology in their production. E.g. music from, but not limited to: Lady Gaga, Kanye West, Black Eyed Peas, The Bloody Beetroots, Justice, Prodigy, Calle 13. I do realize I use the term “Electronica” very loosely. I’m not the type that dwells on categorizations and sub-categorizations.

[2] I took some artistic license and rearranged the lines of this poem.

[3] I just have to remind myself to take it easy with the volume. With all this loudness pounding my ears, I hope I don’t end up deaf at 50.

[4] Not really. I deny it to myself. Dr. Bir would probably tell me to avoid it though if it would make me want to work out that bad.

[5] Dick Clark

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II.

But not everyone is a fan. Some dismiss Electronica as too inorganic, too manufactured, too mindless, too shallow to carry any significant meaning. They claim it has no soul.  It is as if somehow the synthesizers, sequencers, drum machines, samplers, etc. have eviscerated Electronica of its connection to the human spirit.

In defense of Electronica, I call my first witness to the stand. What does Lady Gaga say?

“People believe that electronic music is soulless… and it’s not, and you know why it’s not? Because the soul that I feel from my fucking beautiful fans at my show cannot be a lie. It can’t. I’ve never in my life seen the intensity in their faces. I mean, they blood-suck and kill to be together. I mean, there’s glitter and there’s sweat, and they’re dancing and there’s hair bows and they believe in it so much. And it’s real. In those moments it’s real. They bring my music to life.”

–Lady Gaga

Amen, Gaga! She speaks against the charge leveled against her genre, invoking the soul her fans display effusively at her concerts. They believe in it so much and they make it real. Well said.

This argument that any type of music has no soul ought to be laid to rest here and now. All music has soul insofar as it nourishes the soul of the person that listens to it. The lyrical content/subject matter then is irrelevant, but the connection people have to the music, that is of paramount importance. 

Electronica is not just rhythmic noise without anything substantial to say. It says something if you are receptive to it. If the music has no relevance in your life, do not indict it and say it has no soul. If it does not speak to you that does not mean it does not speak.

Lady Gaga’s music speaks directly to her fans.

As a matter of fact, Lady Gaga speaks to me as if she were my personal trainer:

Whoo! Let’s go!

Half Psychotic, Sick hypnotic

got my blueprint its symphonic.
Half Psychotic, sick hypnotic

got my blueprint electronic.

Go! Use your muscle, carve it out,

work it, hustle!
I got it, just stay close enough to get it
Don't slow! Drive it, Clean it, Lysol, Bleed it,
Spend the last dough (I got it)
In your Pocko (I got it)

Just dance!

Lady Gaga encourages me and I run harder, better, faster, stronger. I work out and sweat to her music. It provides the inspiration and I give it exertion. It gives me life and I give it life in return. Symbiosis! So long as I have ears to hear and lungs to breathe, so long live her songs and they give life to me. The music, its message, its mood resonate within me. Doubtless, I’m not the only one that feels this way. I point to exhibit A!

Exhibit A

Exhibit A (Again, from a different point of view)

Ah, behold! Everyone united behind a pounding bass, an electronic pulse! Collective effervescence at its finest! Vivacity true and unrestrained! Vim and vigor! Music reverberating throughout the crowd! How can you deny that soul?

Still, others will persist and argue not against the content, but argue against the medium or the mood. They will say how can anything that is so loud, festive and layered have any soul? Or, how can anything made electronically have any soul?

Does soulful music only express pain? Is lonely introspection alone qualified for soul? What about accompanied jubilation? Do Beethoven’s solo piano sonatas carry more soul than his symphonies? Is there no soul in elaboration? Is there no soul in joy? Isn’t the soul expressed alike in joy and in sorrow?

Sure, a vocal performance backed by a single instrument like the piano feels more intimate than a fully produced song with dozens of people involved in its performance. But that doesn’t mean the latter can’t have soul. A critic for Rolling Stone, Rob Sheffield, says that Lady Gaga’s most recent album has a lot of excess, but adds that this “excess just amps up the emotion in the song. …That’s the achievement of Born this way: The more excessive Gaga gets, the more honest she sounds.” I wholeheartedly agree, Mr. Sheffield.

Is electronica less soulful merely because it is impossible to create unplugged? The technology behind it all renders it inorganic and unnatural? The whole apparatus of music is inorganic, then, in that sense. When was the last time you went and plucked guitar strings out of a tree? The only truly primordial musical instrument is the human voice. All others required our ingenuity to discover them and our technology to create them.

This idea that music heavily layered and produced in a studio through electronic technology is “soulless” is not a standalone idea; it is one caught in the current of a deeper sentiment –that electricity and technology in general are soulless, that they are impediments, obstructions to the expression of our true natures.

III.

Why is everyone so anti-electricity anyway?

A friend of mine once lost her phone and said, “I feel so naked without my phone. That’s wrong, huh, that I’m so tied to my phone?” I said, “What’s wrong with that?”

“It’s so unnatural for people to be soooo tied to technology and all this electrical shit. It’s like I feel naked without it!”

“Well, clothes are technological too. Wouldn’t you feel so naked without your clothes too?”

What she says reveals a strain of thought that demands immediate rebuttal and refutation- that electricity is unnatural, it is inorganic, therefore against our nature.

It was the natural evolution of man to discover electricity, its utility, to harness and manipulate it. Electricity is a collective experience, an advantage handed down from one generation to the next.

We are homo sapiens, a species that knows, distinct from other species above else by our ability to use our knowledge to our advantage- our brains are our primary defining feature!

“Humans have a highly developed brain, capable of abstract reasoning, language, introspection, and problem solving. This mental capability, combined with an erect body carriage that frees the hands for manipulating objects, has allowed humans to make far greater use of tools than any other living species on Earth. Other higher-level thought processes of humans, such as self-awareness, rationality, and sapience are considered to be defining features of what constitutes a "person".”

Discovering electricity is not outside our nature then. On the contrary, it is precisely in our nature to utilize it as a tool. We would be primates without our tools and knowledge.  

What is more, any one that has ever taken a biology class can tell you: Electricity is IN US.

The body moves only by electronic communication between the brain and the limbs through

synapses and axons. ELECTRICITY IS OUR MOVING FORCE- It is what makes our actions and behaviors possible. All hitherto performed actions would not be possible without electricity then. Our whole lives would be impossible without it, so maybe we shouldn’t hate it so much.

IV.

Exercising has really remodeled my body –70 pounds lost and counting.

Every minute physical change in my body is a testament to my experience.

There’s inches around the waist lost,

double chin made single, veins more visible, muscles enlarged.

Written on my limbs is the history of my experience.

There are muscles flexed, tendons stretched;

neurons, axons, synapses all coordinated in orchestrated movement.

There’s breathing, inhaling, exhaling.

There’s endurance there, sweat, a heartbeat, a pulse. 

There’s pain there; satisfaction at overcoming it.

There’s previous defeats transformed into success.

There is STRENGTH… of body, of mind.

And of soul.

You can tell a lot about a person just by looking at them.

A Caveat before you confront me with this, the little saying: never judge a book by its cover –of course, I am not advocating trying to assess the content of a person’s moral character based solely on appearance. That’s just stupid. Good and Evil come to us in all fitness levels, as Cruella de Vil and Ursula have shown us.

But it is not wrong to collect information based on a person’s appearance. The body has an infinity of detail that can divulge so much about the person. Someone looking at me a few years ago would have been able to easily discern a propensity to indulge and a lack of exercise. And clearly they wouldn’t have been wrong.

Teachers instruct students to analyze literature, to break it down to discover its themes. Why not use those context clues learned in English to analyze the themes of the body and attempt to interpret them?

Look at someone with impressive musculature and you would not be foolish to connotatively guess or presume pride in that body. Anyone looking at me back then would be able to see my obesity and take an educated guess and read insecurity. And these guesses tend to be right. However, do not take that educated guess as 100% truth because it is after all, ipso facto, only a guess. If the soul is a ten-story house, the body is a first floor window into what the entire house looks like. It reveals a lot, yes, but only glimpses into the whole.

Anyone looking at my body the way it used to look, reading insecurity, indulgence, will have glimpsed an aspect of my soul –But just that, only a glimpse into the all of my soul.

V.  

And what is my soul?

The soul is memory. It is history. It grows, is nurtured by my behavior, my actions. It is a collection of experiences, a culmination of the past, all made possible by this body and its electricity.

Numerous faiths conceive of the body as an impediment, a hindrance to whatever spiritual end -heaven, nirvana, enlightenment, etc., as if the body imprisons the soul; mundane biological needs and desires forming the bars of that incarceration.

I have no theological clout whatsoever to dispute these religious claims, but, on the face of it, I am inclined to disagree. The body is not the enemy of the soul, but an element of the soul, a part of it. 

This body, the incubator of the soul, has history written all over it. It gives details to the contents of that soul. These stretch-marks all over my body are tattooed on the incorporeal soul. Blemishes and beauty alike are recorded on it; they are written there; they form a part of my physical/spiritual experience. They are part of my history, have helped construct what I am and who I am. I cannot deny them.

The body and the soul are not separate entities, but more like different aspects of the same thing. They are not opposing forces. One is more like a reflection of the other.

Walt Whitman saw this and he sings the body electric.

I, too, sing the body electric and praise the body electronica. Its indefatigable rhythms and pulses have revolutionized my body and helped alter the content of my soul.

VI.

So Dance. Alors on Danse! Go out there and Pump up the jam. Work out, exercise, be active and enjoy the music. Working out does the body good and it’ll do the soul some good too.

Writing this piece has been somewhat difficult because I get this insatiable urge to go work out as I listen to the music that inspires this essay. I am literally bobbing my head, dancing in my chair, as I type, listening to Congorock’s “Babylon.”

I think I’ll go work out now. 

Self-portrait 3.31.11 in my garage after running

I know that, based on all my talk about exercise, this photo of me must be disappointing, for I am not an impressive specimen displaying awe-inspiring musculature. But, people, I am a work in progress. Wait for the forthcoming self-portrait a few years from now, and when you see that, you’ll be singing a different tune.

LIST OF SONGS MENTIONED:

• Calle 13- Electro Movimiento
• Bloody Beetroots ft. Congorock- ROMBO
• Kanye West – Christian Dior Denim Flow
• Kanye West – Power (Remix)
• Lady Gaga – Just Dance (Ft. Colby Odonis)
• Lady Gaga – Judas
• Kanye West –Harder, Better, Faster, Stronger
• Congorock- Babylon
• Stromae- Alors on Danse
• Technotronic- Pump up the Jam