The One Taste of Elevator Music and Demonic Screamo

Alternating between apparent polarities can lead you to experiencing the polarities as both distinct and the same.

When I was in college, I made a mix (cassette) tape by alternating tracks from the Beastie Boys “Paul’s Boutique” (ornate rap music) and The Best of Frank Sinatra (heavily orchestrated ballads from the forties above love and romance). I really enjoyed the alternating energies, slow crooning about tossing coins in a fountain, alternating with paeans to shaking one’s rump, followed by noting how you are like a melody…

Many years later, I was given the esoteric instruction at a hot spring to alternate between the hot pool (around 115 degrees) and the cold plunge (40-something degrees) until my nervous system no longer noticed the difference, and enlightenment would be achieved.

Well, not quite…but the interesting thing is at first, the hot and the cold plunge were shocking in opposite ways, but after enough transits between, around seven, they were still distinct temperatures, but my nervous system wasn’t adding shock to the experience, and they had a similar feel: being in water.

Similarly, listening to my mix tape at first pulled me from getting revved up into being irritated at the slow tempos, and then reversing the adjustment, but by the end of the mix tape, the one taste of the two vibes was apparent.

In my car these days, I have satellite radio. Two of my favorite channels are one that plays elevator music (often known as Muzak): syrupy orchestrations of slow pop songs, no vocals present, that are meant to cast you into a shopping torpor. I also like the most intense metal station, all growling vocals, and titles like “The Demons are Ripping Your Flesh Off” by “DeathMaster” (representative, made-up).

If I go back and forth enough between these two channels, switching on the end of every song, I achieve that One Taste, where, although still distinct, my nervous system doesn’t seem to consider the experiences as fundamentally different anymore.

When that “one taste” vibe is attained, all music can be enjoyed: I can flip from opera to punk to Broadway to Mexican pop to EDM, and it’s all great.

Everything is different. And everything is the same in its perfection.