Erik Satie - Gymnopédies, No 1. (Lent et douloureux)
So, there’s this odd, out-of-character episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation wherein the Enterprise is randomly pulled into this vast voidspace by some godlike being that cruelly pokes and prods at the crew in its investigations of human nature. When the creature decides it’s going to need to kill “a third to a half of the crew” to fully grasp human death, Captain Picard defiantly throws the self-destruct sequence.
(Don’t worry: the specifics aren’t important.)
So, after this exchange, as the self-destruct timer counts down from 20 minutes, Picard retires to his room and, in anticipation of a lame, violent, weakly-written death, puts this piece of music on.
…and it’s weirdly perfect in that context.
I first heard Satie’s Gymnopédies this winter, in the midst of a pretty serious bout of depression. For better or worse, I fixated upon it like almost no song I’ve ever heard before: there’s a barely-describable, transcendent quality to this piece. It’s “pretty”, sure, but lots of songs are pretty — that’s not where its unique virtue lies.
While I mean no arrogance in comparing myself to Jean-Luc Picard, simply, it is among the purest, most stately musical embodiments of bittersweetness I know.
…a good song to die to.
Macabre, maybe, but apt.
