On the Knocking of the Guitar
in "If 6 Were 9"

 

 

Thy works are not as those of other men, simply and merely great works of art, but are also like the phenomena of nature, like the sun and the sea, the stars and the flowers, like frost and snow, rain and dew, hailstorm and thunder, which are to be studied with entire submission of our own faculties, and in the perfect faith that in them there can be no too much or too little, nothing useless or inert, but that, the farther we press in our discoveries, the more we shall see proofs of design and self-supporting arrangement where the careless eye had seen nothing but accident!

Thomas DeQuincey, "On the Knocking at the Gate in Macbeth," 1823

 

Those humans who are capable of genius's complexities speak most loudly when they use that which is simple and unadorned to make their point. DaVinci left reams of scientific discoveries that remained unrealized for centuries after his time, but what we remember most of him is the Mona Lisa's smile, a few brushstrokes laid in curves now coiled in the world's imagination forever. Beethoven pulled music of such power out of himself that surely it must have hurt to put it all down on paper, but of all his efforts, most of us recognize the Moonlight Sonata's gentle arpeggios most readily (as well as those four blaring notes in two keys, of which three are repeats, that herald the start of the Fifth Symphony). Dickinson's poems do not call attention to themselves but rather to what they signify to the extent that we are transported, open mouthed, into the world of her vision and only later regain ourselves enough to look back at the verses through which we entered and to marvel at their construction. And in any massive, intricate work of art, the totality presents us with too much to absorb at once; we must instead regard the components, each of which is humble in size but perfect in function, lending itself to the whole of which it is part. The snowflake, not the blizzard, bears God's fingerprints, and so it is with our own attempts at creation.

DeQuincey, in the essay excerpted at the beginning of this one, comments on one such snowflake: the function of the knocking of the gate in Macbeth after the murder of Duncan, specifically on how the effect it had on him did not present itself to conscious understanding at first but only after much internal scrutiny. Many works of art are like that, seizing the subconscious by the lapels before the conscious mind knows what has happened. After many digressions and presentations of topical examples that led to his insight into the knocking's dramatic purpose, he is at last able to tell us why the knocking produced in him such a feeling of dread and awesome power. But his perception of the knock, his emotional reaction to it, did not wait for the explanation; he had to work backward from it. Not being a word but a mere sound, he had to regard its place in relationship to the rest of the play and call the words out.

Jimi Hendrix's work contains thousands of unique sounds, but his reputation is for the piercing and splashy more often than not. People think of "Purple Haze" or "Star-Spangled Banner" before they do "Little Wing" or "Drifting." And his perfectionism in the studio contributed to the breakup of the Experience: the other two musicians grew exasperated after hundreds of takes of "Gypsy Eyes." There are no false starts, no accidents in the studio work documented on his three completed releases, unless he preceded Brian Eno, who instructs us to "honor [our] mistake as a hidden intention." What are we to make, then, of the peculiar knocking in "If 6 Were 9"? It's not loud, it varies in speed, sometimes going arrhythmic, but its presence is unnerving; once you focus on it, it fills your attention. And it's not a comforting sound, either. It means something, surely, but it could well be the knocking from the woodshed heard late at night when you are all alone, a knocking that means you will not be alone for long because you will not be able to leave it unanswered. Your footsteps fall in rhythm with whoever or whatever is there until you stand before the door and open it. Like the knocking in Macbeth, the knocking in "If 6 Were 9" is a very small part of the entire work, but it is no smaller than any other fulcrum on which a big lever swings.

Before we proceed, however, we must consider meaning and how it is determined. As a subjective actor (with scales and claws and spines), neither I nor any of you, my readers, are qualified to address the question of objective significance, although I am certain that the universe drips with it. Subjective meaning--what our brains perceive and to which they assign value--is the proper focus for consideration here. Thus, the more pertinent question is whether our minds are capable of perceiving meaning unless it results from binary opposition to something else. Things may have meaning in and of themselves, but the only way we can conceive of meaning, even a hypothetical objective meaning, is in terms of what things mean to us. Anything that appears to have meaning in and of itself is merely displaying its links with the rest of the universe. The concept 'one' has meaning only because we know that it is surrounded on both sides by an infinite range of other numbers that are not 'one'. Words have definitions that exclude all the others in the dictionary. A rose held in the teeth means something entirely different from a rose on a coffin or a rose in a bouquet. And a knocking at the gate after a murder is not a knocking at the gate when Avon calls. Just as DeQuincey deciphered the ominous knocking in Macbeth by considering its place in the play and in the dynamics of human action, Hendrix's purpose in incorporating the knocking sounds in "If 6 Were 9" can be revealed only by examining the entire song and attempting to put in words that immediate, emotional apprehension that is music's--or rather, nonverbal sound's--advantage over language and then singling out the knocking to discover what role it plays in the overall experience.

From the start, we are assaulted by strong guitar and drums, with a sibilant snare reinforcing the percussive rhythm that carries through the entire piece. After three repetitions, Hendrix begins singing--or incanting--the lyrics, which speak of his nonconcern should the world go haywire in various ways. Guitar snakes right along with his voice as he makes his case, and then it explodes in great angular swaths as he screams that he lives in a world of his own with his own issues and responsibilities, a world other than that of the people to whom the song seems to be addressed. The initial figure returns, with a few embellishments, and the second verse strengthens the theme of unchanged identity and continuity in the presence of topsy-turvy upheaval, even if directed at or occurring to the counterculture, of which Hendrix was and is generally considered to be not only a member but a guiding light. At 0:59 and 1:02 in the song, we hear the first harbingers of the echoing knock, but he does not dwell on them. He eschews self-definition in terms of anything but himself; he will not ape anyone else's practices or viewpoints; he will be his own man; and with that, his guitar cracks in punctuation.

Silence follows. Then the music returns, quiet this time, as Hendrix takes aim at members of the dominant culture who might wish that he and those like him would disappear; he affirms his right to existence and his pride to be who and what he is.

The musical passage following is probably more of an insult to those whom he is castigating than his words could ever be. Layer upon layer of guitar--washes of sheer noise like solar flares, prehistoric birdsongs, triumphant glissandos and tremolos that waver and ebb like shortwave radio transmissions, Magellanic clouds, sharp twangs--soars over the drums convulsing and bass ascending and descending in 4/4 time. And starting at 1:48 and proceeding through 2:49 into the song, precisely one minute and one second, we hear the knocking in 2/4 time. In contrast to the rest of the music, which is complex, highly textured, abstract, and evocative of outer space, this new sound is primitive, as though beaten out on a log with a stick, over and over, lying below the turmoil that has caught our attention until we notice it and then can focus on nothing else. It carries us along so that we are not blinded by the display over our heads. But the effect is not homey or benevolent. This is not the sort of sound you would want to hear in the woods late at night; it speaks of intent and purpose, yes, but not an intent that necessarily means us well. It makes us wonder if Hendrix was being truthful or ironic, even mocking, in his opening declamations. What doesn't affect us all? Is he merely assuming a dramatic pose in this song? The knocking gets louder as the guitars wrap around each other like vines and is brought front and center just for a second as the musical collage stops. Then the guitars swoop and echo, merging into Hendrix's laughter.

From 3:27 through 3:57, the initial figure returns, albeit muted under his voice, as he repeats his earlier--though now somewhat undermined--defiances, allowing that disasters may occur with his blessing so long as they don't occur to him. The drums surge to the forefront as he mumbles and then retreat, replaced by the knocking, which accompanies a spoken bit in which Hendrix affirms that all of us know what he is saying to be true: that he, like each of us, is the inhabitant of his consciousness, his own world, and that world will end along with him when it is time for him to die; therefore, as the end will be his, so should the journey toward it be his to determine and enjoy as he sees fit. Behind--but just barely behind--his voice, the knocking grows more sinister yet, suddenly duplicating itself, slightly out of sync, and becoming the sound of first one horse and than many horses marching in a funeral cortege. John and Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther King are carried by us as we listen. The horses march closer and closer, knowing that someday our coffins will be theirs to bear. As if feeling our discomfort, Hendrix comforts us as if we were frightened children and then exhorts the music to rise up and dispel that which he himself has summoned.

And rise up it does. Even more deafening and chaotic than the middle passage, the guitars spray forcefields of ecstasy, as if Rilke had anticipated them so many years ago, against the drums and bass, and then a recorder that Hendrix had purchased at a flea market in London adds to the confusion, splaying notes, sending them falling to the ground below and then sweeping them upward like the victims of a plane crash caught in an updraft. And underneath it all is the knocking, rushing us along, providing the only possible basis for navigation through the swirls and cries. The guitar whirls like a tornado as the knocking gets louder, faster, and then suddenly breaks rhythm, falling on itself, running and chasing, involuntary muscular contractions of orgasm, coming to the surface of the firestorm at the end against the final wails of the recorder.

Music is an artifact, and we are the observers. We produce it from ourselves and then stand apart from it, just as the knocking sound differentiates itself from the rest of the composition. It is immortal; we are not. We hear in the knocking an intimation of our own lives, our own imperfect, organic existence, and no matter how glorious or awe inspiring or transformative our lives may sometimes be, we know that they will end for each of us someday. The knocking is our heartbeat, and the heartbeat is nothing more nor less than the footsteps of death, which stop at last when it catches up to us after having pursued us since the day of our birth. Jimi Hendrix knew this, and he also knew that by placing something like ourselves in "If 6 Were 9," something apart from the music yet linked to it, just as we are when we listen, we would be forced to regard ourselves as something rich and strange, something at once doomed and promised salvation. Could the seeming finality of death be no more than an epiphenomenon of perception? he asks. For after all, when the song is over, we are still here.

 

© 2000 Gregor Everitt