Sublime

Last year I created a playlist, which at the time was called “Music to die to” referring to songs/ musical works (to use a more abstract term) that awakened a feeling, at that time, for which I did not have a specific word.

I noticed that they were works with which I felt that life did have a transcendental, fundamental purpose. That made me feel that perhaps everything is not all a simple accident and the meaning of life depends on each person (what I at least tend to think most of the time).

Works that I imagined listening to at the end of my life, whatever the situation may be, and that would comfort me at that moment by making me think “It was worth it, even with all the bad things.” Some that have made me cry (for good).

Examples:

• Pictures of you - The Cure
• Fourth movement of Beethoven’s 9th Symphony
• Touch - Daft Punk
• When It’s Cold I’d Like to Die - Moby
• Compassion - Ilya Beshevli

Of course, the works that move us and generate this feeling vary according to the personality and individuality of each one.

I find it the deepest feeling that art can generate. And one of those that make us more human. Because what I describe can also be generated by cinema, painting, reading, etc. In me, nothing particularly generates it in a way as intense as music, despite having cried with movies, books and so on.

At the time I found a word in particular that sums up all of the above:

sublime extremely good, beautiful, or enjoyable:

From the spanish definition:

1. adj. Said of a person: Who cultivates some art or technique with admirable greatness. Sublime speaker, writer, painter.
2. adj. Ret. Said of style: Endowed with extreme nobility, elegance and gravity.

From wikipedia:

“In aesthetics, the sublime (from the Latin sublīmis) is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.”

I renamed the playlist with this term that seems more encompassing to me than “Music I would die to.”

There is something about finding terms that help us describe complex feelings (or sets of) that helps us understand and feel better. I do not know why. I can’t explain it at least. Quickly Googling I found this article which touches on the topic tangentially but refers to negative feelings such as anger and sadness. But perhaps the same thing happens in reverse with positive feelings (like feeling this ecstasy over something sublime). “Labeling it” intensifies it. My assumptions.