Language, ineffability, and Coldplay’s Politik
Image designed by A. L. Peck
“All art constantly aspires towards the condition of music.” – Walter Pater
Language is a tool for describing the world. But the world can’t be described by language alone. Why? Because words simplify emotions, experiences, and ideas. For instance, if I say I’m angry, that doesn’t fully capture how I feel. I could be feeling a mixture of frustration, boredom, and impatience, or maybe even hatred and fury. But you wouldn’t be able to glean that from my words alone—you’d rely on other cues, like my gestures, facial expressions, and tone of voice, to understand how I’m truly feeling.
More importantly, language is insufficient in conveying meaning because certain experiences, like spiritual epiphanies or unconditional love, are ineffable (beyond rational comprehension or description).
An antidote to ineffability
Arthur Schopenhauer, a 19th-century German philosopher known for his views on aesthetics, believed art could provide a way to understand the irrational, indescribable features of the world.
Effective art captures the essence of whatever it’s trying to express and allows the person looking at it to contemplate this same essence. Imagine a painting of a solitary figure standing on a quiet beach with his hands in his pockets and gazing out at the sea. The colors are cool and muted, and the overall atmosphere of the painting conveys a sense of solitude and introspection. A person looking at this painting can understand and reflect on the emotion of solitude without needing to personally experience the situation.
In this way, art can make us forget ourselves and become fully absorbed in the artwork’s core emotion, meaning, or idea. As Stanford’s Encyclopedia of Philosophy puts it, “We lose ourselves in the object, forget about our individuality, and become the clear mirror of the object.”
Music is the gateway to understanding
Schopenhauer believed that music was the most powerful art form for contemplating reality. It connects directly with our emotions and instincts and doesn’t rely on words or concepts.
Sounds have direct pathways to the parts of our brain that handle emotions, like the amygdala and limbic system. So, when we hear a sound, our emotions are triggered automatically without requiring us to consciously think. Because of this innate connection, we can use music to think about parts of the world and our own feelings that might be hard to understand with words.
A Rush of Blood to the Head
Coldplay’s song Politik is a prime example of how music helps us navigate the ineffable and grasp deeper meaning. It’s also what inspired this exploration of language, comprehension, and music.
Let’s back up. Politik is the first song on Coldplay’s album, A Rush of Blood to the Head. They named their album after a crazy sensation we all feel once in a while—when the world is spinning or getting pixelated, and you’re wondering if you’re going to faint or if you just stood up too quickly. A rush of blood to the head signifies a change in sensation and perception for the briefest moment. You know how it feels without needing a description because you’ve felt it before.
Listening to Politik is like experiencing a rush of blood to the head. Chris Martin (Coldplay’s lead singer) wrote this song after 9/11, and it’s about trying to figure out your place in the world in the wake of disaster. The song opens with pounding on the piano, smashing of drums, and thrashing on the guitar. It conveys destruction, chaos, upheaval, and something else that can’t quite be articulated, but we still kind of know what it is. Sound familiar? :)
Ambiguity breeds meaning and timelessness
Here’s the song on YouTube—I highly encourage you to watch it, it’s the best live performance of a song I’ve seen!
The song’s bridge (starting at 4:20, with maximum intensity at 5:00) holds the most emotion:
“But give me love over, love over, love over this, ah
And give me love over, love over, lover over this, ah."
The most powerful moment in the song is the most obscure. It’s the word “this,” followed by the sound “ah.” Chris Martin could have chosen countless other words for “this” (provided they didn’t sound too out of place)—politics, destruction, hatred, etc. The beauty of the ambiguity is that it resists giving “this” (an ineffable feeling) a simplified, finite meaning.
The ambiguity also lends itself to timelessness. We don’t need to be in 2001 to feel similar emotions or relate. There’s chaos all around us. And despite how vast the meaning of “this” could be, it means something we’ve all felt so acutely.
Then comes the sound, “ah,” which feels almost like a surrender—frustration, hopelessness, sadness, and anger at the world and being unable to change anything. The “ah” perfectly captures what we’ve all felt at some point but can’t adequately put into words: in a world of endless possibilities, there’s so much hatred and destruction, this can’t be it. But the effect of the lyric is the opposite of a surrender. It unites listeners in a shared feeling.