Music for dolphins

Molly Mary O’Brien on music manufactured for a new millennium.

It’s New Year’s Eve 2020, the last day of the bad year. We’re in Prospect Park again. As soon as we figured out it was probably okay to sit outdoors in a medium-sized circle, we turned the park into our personal dive bar, coming every weekend with bottles of wine and cans of beer and camping chairs to chatter away about the nothing that was happening and the horror sort of humming underneath. It’s 40 degrees Fahrenheit. Mild weather, weather for babies.

We place LED orbs around our table, light the fire, pop bottles of Prosecco, and crank the Bluetooth speaker. I’ve mixed a dose of MDMA into a cup of water, figuring I’ve earned a surplus of serotonin for this special occasion. I was expecting a big outdoor park party, the kind we’ve seen pop up here all year—sugared-up kids attacking a piñata, dozens of women dressed in white at a long table, all drinking mimosas—but tonight, it’s just us and one other small group across the way.

The playlist is communal. My husband pilots the Spotify, and everyone shouts out requests: “Dark Hearts” by Annie, “Rumors” by Lindsay Lohan. My heart races—whoomp! there it is—and we get deeper into the pop zone—“Groove Is In The Heart,” “Vogue”—and then, giddy and sweaty, we decide on a Pure Moods block. One of those ironic-but-not decisions groups make sometimes. Enya, Enigma, and then my friend Lucy requests the song “Adiemus.” Somehow I’ve never heard it before, and I stop dancing for a second and listen to…what is this? A chorus sings in a language that I can’t quite clock. I can’t even tell what continent it comes from. Swelling voices, soaring harmonies, beating drums. Across the way, the other party props up a Christmas tree on a metal grill and sets it on fire. This is some pagan shit, I think. A flaming tree, a plague, everyone frolicking outside like maniacs.

I play “Adiemus” daily for the next few weeks. I like to hit repeat on catharsis until its charge runs out. Then I try to figure out what the song is. (I like to do research until the magic wears off.) Welsh composer Karl Jenkins wrote “Adiemus” in 1994. The lyrics, which I thought were some mysterious choral language, are nonsense: an archived page on Jenkins’s website says he wanted to “create a sound that is universal and timeless” by “removing the distraction of lyrics.” I thought “Adiemus” might have had some grand classical premiere, on a blonde wood stage, with female soloists in long velvet dresses. It was actually commissioned for a Delta Airlines television advertisement—vaguely international music for cushy international flights. In the ad spot, dolphins slice through water underneath a fleet of pure white planes; the album art for the Adiemus CD also features a small graphic of a dolphin. Dolphins show up often in New Age imagery, maybe because they represent the delusion that humans can spiritually communicate with animals, or maybe just because they always seem to be smiling: positive vibes.

MORE MOODS