(The Heart Asks Pleasure First - by Michael Nyman)
I’ve been thinking lately about how emotions aren’t as singular as we often describe them.
When someone says “I feel sad” or “I feel happy,” it often hides the complexity underneath. What we usually feel is a composition: a blend of memory, hope, fear, longing... etc..
People often say emotions shouldn’t be explained. That doing so strips them of their value. That they’re powerful because they’re mysterious.
I respectfully disagree.
Deeply.
I think emotions can and should be understood. The fact that we often can’t doesn’t mean there aren’t entire universes in there, waiting to be discovered.
Some time ago, I talked with someone about the idea of emotion as a layered structure, that you can divide a concept or feeling into layer after layer, until meaning dissolves. In theory. That conversation changed how I write, and how I listen to myself.
One example that came up was The Piano soundtrack.
There’s a particular piece in there, slow, yearning ("The Heart Asks Pleasure First" - see above). When I listen to it, I don’t just feel “sad” or “calm”. Instead, it’s like my mind is being drawn into something vast and familiar, and yet distant, like the horizon.
So I tried to break it down.
At the surface:
It’s a beautiful melody, repetitive rhythm, flowing like water. It sounds like someone speaking without words.
One layer deeper:
I begin to sense why it feels that way: the music never resolves, it circles, returns, avoids closure.
A yearning that doesn’t quite reach its destination
Movement within confinement
A "something" that never hardens
Another layer deeper:
Now it’s not just about the music. It’s about the person (or me).
The song opens a door inside me that rarely gets touched. A part of me that understands:
The ache of not being fully seen
The weight of expressing emotion without language
The sense that something is being remembered, even if I can’t name it
And one more layer down: now we’re at something wordless.
A pressure inside the chest
A sort of weeping that never reaches tears
This is where analysis usually stops, because beyond this, we lose the ability to explain. And in theory, this is where truth begins. A truth people often call subjective, because everyone arrives there through different paths.
But I believe there’s a deeper layer still. I believe the final layer is "purpose". It’s a layer so abstract, so unknown, that everything rational in us resists it. We can sense it, but we can’t grasp it. Like a shape beyond our vision, or a sound just beneath our hearing.
I think it’s there, we just don’t have the hardware, or the language, to fully process it. That's why it aches.
If you’ve ever felt something like that, something too intricate for a single word, I hope you know: there’s nothing wrong with wanting to understand it. Some feelings aren’t there to pass, they’re there to be understood.