One of the things I enjoyed most about learning to read music was the symbols used in musical notation. I liked their elegance, but also how ancient they looked. There was a hieroglyphic mystery to them. But they also carried something modern, mathematical.
As a kid I tended to anthropomorphize everything, so each symbol had a personality that I couldn’t help seeing. Some of the characters I engaged with during my childhood piano and choir lessons included:
- The treble clef: a rotund gentleman, prone to mansplaining, with a moustache straight out of the 19th Century.
- The bass clef: the rotund gentleman’s cousin, no moustache but always butting into conversations without being invited.
- The fermata: a panicky woman in her early fifties.
- The sixteenth note: a joyful little girl in kindergarten with a long ponytail. Often enjoys skipping down the street, or holding hands with three friends.
- Middle C: a turtle with no redeeming qualities other than being reliable.
One I could never pin down was the quarter note rest, which happens to feature on the cover album of Clem Leek’s 2013 LP Rest.
It still gives me mixed messages. Sometimes it looks like a bird captured in transition between regular flight and a dive, perhaps to grab a fish from the water below. But then it looks like a snooty person in profile, sticking their nose haughtily in the air.
But since I’ve been listening to Clem Leek’s Rest more and more recently, I’m starting to see it as something calming, or associated with sleep. Turn sideways and it kind of looks like the smudge of toothpaste that you put on your toothbrush as part of your bedtime routine. Or maybe it’s the line traced by a feather as it flutters to the ground.
Try coming up with your own interpretations as you listen to the entire album, all of which is just about as soothing as this song.
What makes this a beautiful song:
1. Although the piano is Leek’s main instrument, he does well here with a guitar drenched in reverb.
2. Did I say the guitar was drenched in reverb? Because the synth is more reverb than synth.
3. Structurally, it’s a bit like falling asleep. The opening minute has a discernible tempo, but it gets a bit floaty and unmoored after that.
Recommended listening activity:
Looking at your signature to decide which animal it resembles. (Mine is a rabbit running on its hind legs.)