What
Music Says about Our Lives—A
Celebration!
Love Is Intimate & Wide in the
Beatles'
"I Saw Her Standing There" by Lynette Abel
One
day,
while attending Fort Hunt HS, in
Alexandria, VA, I was asked if I would be
interested in an extra ticket a friend
happened to have for an upcoming Beatles
Concert. Wow! Yes, I
was! This would be the
Beatles' first live concert in the U.S. to
take place February 11, 1964 at the
Washington D.C. Coliseum. And then, like
the thousands of people in that audience,
I was thrilled when I heard this:
That was—as I’m sure everyone
knows—the beginning of “I Saw Her
Standing There” by John Lennon and
Paul McCartney. With that
unforgettable 1,2,3, Fa, we are
catapulted into a joyful, rollicking
melody telling the story of a young
man being affected in a big way by a
young woman who stirs him very, very
much. Does she, in her mystery
and personal charm, stand for
something big, something impersonal,
beyond herself—the world? I think
so. In his historic fifteen
questions about beauty, Is
Beauty the Making One of
Opposites?, Eli Siegel
asks this about Impersonal and
Personal:
Does every instance
of art and beauty contain something
which stands for the meaning of all
that is, all that is true in an
outside way, reality just so? –and
does every instance of art and
beauty also contain something which
stands for the individual mind, a
self which has been moved, a person
seeing as original person?
I think those words
describe what is going in this song.
The lyrics, sung by Paul McCartney, describe
one man’s intimate, personal feeling
about a woman while the music gives
his feeling impersonal rhythmic and
harmonic form: hand-clapping in
counterpoint with the drums of Ringo
Starr, rich blues harmony sung by John
Lennon, and exciting and complex
guitar interludes by George Harrison.
Along with the man’s personal feeling,
this song contains something wider,
“something which stands for the
meaning of all that is.”
The chord progression
stays almost entirely within a single
key, an E major blues. And the
words are straightforward
English. But--at the moment
everybody loves--the song suddenly
pulls us out of the key, to that pure
syllable of joy: WOOO! We’ve
gone from containment to an
uncontained, expansive moment that is
literally ecstatic, “standing outside
oneself.” You’ll hear that
moment twice as I play a little more
including the bridge of the song.
We just heard another way the
intimate and wide are
dramatically, beautifully together
as both Paul McCartney and John
Lennon take the melody in the
bridge. Paul sings, “Well my heart
went boom when I crossed that
room, and I held her hand in
mine.” The way that
word “mieeen,” sung by John Lennon
stretches out is just the opposite
of the contracting, ownership way
the word “mine” is usually
used. It’s sure personal,
intimate, but simultaneously goes
way out. Doesn’t this meet a deep
hope in all of us?
I didn’t know when I
heard this song at age 14 that it
was solving a question I
had. Even though I had many
friends and dates, and was on my
high school cheerleading squad, I
often felt locked in myself,
painfully separate. I thought I
had to be hidden and strategic,
very much with men. In an
Aesthetic Realism lesson that Eli
Siegel gave to a rock musician, he
said, “Every person has to make a
one of the most secret thing and
the most public thing. And
rock and roll…says that can be
done.” In a class I attended early
in my study with him, Mr. Siegel
spoke to me about how I saw
people, and he asked:
ES:
Do
you want to really like someone?
Or do you think you’re afraid to
[have] other people nuzzling in
yourself? Do you think you’re
bitterly devoted to yourself?
LA:
Yes,
I think so.
ES:
If
it is wise for you, do it….Do you
feel men deserve your honesty?...
When you are with a man is your
purpose to be crafty or to get to
your feelings more, to show what
you feel?
LA:
To be crafty.
I’m tremendously
grateful to have learned that wanting
to hide my feelings and try to fool a
man was a form of contempt and is what
made me feel empty inside; it also
made love impossible. In another
class Mr. Siegel explained, “You’ll
never feel good unless you feel
kindness and good will are good
sense.” Aesthetic Realism
enabled me to feel this, to have a
purpose I can believe in. In this
song, the man is not being “coolly”
strategic about his feelings for this
woman; he’s all out: “Well my heart
went boom when I crossed that room,
and I held her hand in mieen.”
Again, as to that word “mine”
(“mi-een”), it is held across three
full measures and then into the
fourth, beginning on a high F#, rising
up to a B and then culminating on the
high C#. Through their compositional
technique, the Beatles have us feel
the width and intensity of this man’s
feeling.
Accompanied by John, George, and
Ringo, Paul screams that famous
Beatle's scream. He’s proud
to be affected! After that,
solo guitar and drums back up, and
give emphasis to, this man’s
emotion. “How large do we
want our emotions to be?” Mr.
Siegel asked in a class he gave on
greatness in music. “Do we like
the idea of having a large
emotion? Music can show us
how.” I’m glad to learn more
about this from a song I’ve loved
for many years, “I Saw Her
Standing There.”
describe
one man’s intimate, personal feeling
about a woman while the music gives
his feeling impersonal rhythmic and
harmonic form: hand-clapping in
counterpoint with the drums of Ringo
Starr, rich blues harmony sung by John
Lennon, and exciting and complex
guitar interludes by George Harrison.
Along with the man’s personal feeling,
this song contains something wider,
“something which stands for the
meaning of all that is.”