There's not much I like better than resolution.
I want friendships to end on a positive note. I like happy endings or at least complete endings in movies and stories. I like puzzles solved, projects completed and the dishes tidied up after a meal.
I'm not alone. Some songs deliberately bring you to the point where you are on edge, waiting for the final notes to play and when they do, you get the payoff. Movies, novels, all are the same.
Years ago, a rock station on the radio played Handel's Messiah on Christmas morning. I love rock and I love classical, so I enjoyed it enormously. Until the clueless DJ moved into commercial during the long pause before the final Amen was sung. It would be going too far to say I was outraged. But it really set my teeth on edge.
Leaving us hanging can make us edgy. Unless we're aware that this sense that something is unfinished is why we're uncomfortable, we can carry that edge around with us like an itchy sweater.
And some people will exploit that. Advertisers will pique our interest in a product they are promoting by leaving us hanging very gently. Posters will go up for a movie they're promoting that raise more questions than they answer. They have to be careful, though. They don't want us to be too uncomfortable, just arouse our curiosity.
Some artists and poets will deliberately leave us hanging - their work designed to evoke emotional unease.
The energy of dissonance all by itself is uncomfortable enough and often can't be avoided. But we can intensify the unease when we add
- expectation (that the puzzle has a solution) or
- anticipation (of the promised payoff) or
- entitlement (that we deserve the payoff)
The sweater gets much itchier.
So it helps to be aware when we are itching for resolution. Then we can see it for what it is and decide where to go from there.
Sometimes it's easy. For Messiah, I pulled out my own recording and listened to the last track again, including the final Amen. (Hey, it really bugged me.) If I hadn't had a copy of the music, I could have hummed it in my head. The same goes for that desire to go back and finish high school, or that bit of unfinished trim in the bathroom. Sometimes we can just get to it and see that it gets done.
Sometimes it's not so easy. Dirty dishes in the sink may have to stay there for days if we are too busy to do them. The trick there is to see that choosing to resolve it later is kind of a resolution in itself. It's not just hanging there - it's been decided. This can take the edge off because we have decided to defer the payoff.
But sometimes there is no possible resolution. Life is full of unanswered questions, incomplete stories, unresolved relationships and sad endings.
The poets and artists and musicians who deliberately leave us hanging could be doing us a favour. They give us a chance to explore that edgy feeling, to see what dissonance feels like in our body and emotions. And when we explore it openly and really become aware of it, we often find out that the dissonance is quite oddly pleasant, in a weird way - it feels bad in a good way. It's the expectation, anticipation and entitlement that we add to that awkward sensation that transforms it into a deeply itchy sweater.
So the next time some clueless DJ leaves me hanging before the song is really over, rather than reaching for my own copy of the music, maybe I will linger a little while in dissonance. Maybe I'll see how much of the itch is the feeling itself and how much is my desire for resolution.
