How Ambient Pushes Me Forward

Antonio Topete

When you first hear ambient music, a few thoughts may occur to you. Maybe it’s that this is very relaxing, but you don’t know if you could listen to a whole album of this. Maybe it’s asking yourself “when would I ever hear this?” And maybe it’s that you’re a little bored. For me, all of these thoughts came to mind, and for over a year I shelved ambient music for another time. I don’t remember exactly what made me give it another shot. Honestly, it was probably the serene artwork on Brian Eno’s Ambient 1: Music For Airports. Something about the faded colors, the topographic design, it drew me in. It was probably also the fact that I was at the airport, and I couldn’t pass up on the fitting context. So after getting through the pleasantries of security, I threw on my headphones and let Brian Eno walk me to my gate.

As the ethereal notes of piano and airy synths filled my ears, I looked around. I saw the people walking up and down the aisles, suitcases and tired children in tow. I saw the sun coming through the windows. I saw the planes lined up outside. The airport can be a stressful place, but it’s also quite mundane. Just like on the outside, people in airports are just trying to get where they need to go, and they float on by you on your journey. Music For Airports was just the same for me in that moment; it was a bit mundane. The sounds come and they go, and the music is sparse, like it’s also floating through your life. But at the same time, in the music and in the airport, the simplicity let me find something much different: the beauty of feeling present. For 48 minutes, ambient music had me seeing things as they were, not because of any messages or themes (there are no lyrics in most ambient music), but rather because the music was sufficiently bare that whatever was around me was the focus of what I heard. And right there, I fell in love with ambient music.

The truth is most people are probably more familiar with ambient music than they think. If you’ve ever watched nature documentaries, or found a video of soothing images to relax to, or heard music to meditate with, chances are there’s been some ambient in your life, too. And much like my experience at the airport, ambient music works in these contexts to bring your attention to something else: the birds building their nest, the beautiful sunset over the horizon, the awareness of your body and mind. But at the same time, the music adds to these experiences in a way that’s difficult to describe. It’s easy to imagine something off of Green by Hiroshi Yoshimura playing behind the voice of David Attenborough, as a camera pans over the droplets of water on the forest leaves, or to imagine the music of Fennesz droning on to the image of a rocket leaving orbit into the cosmos, or a captain steering his ship toward the open sea.

When I hear ambient music, these scenes pass through my mind, but I wonder how music that is so shapeless could be so deeply evocative. I think the reality is that when you eliminate so many of the structures like verses and choruses, when you eliminate lyrics, you free your mind to wander in your own thoughts. There’s no more expectation in ambient music; the patterns of melodies fade away into a single, more drawn out sound. Really, ambient music is repetitive in a much different way, the sounds cycle through, sometimes changing ever so slightly, demanding your attention to the details. In a way, ambient music is much more like life because of this. It’s both unpredictable, and yet always feels very similar from one moment to the next.

It’s fitting that ambient would make its reappearance in my life when it did. The reflective properties of ambient music have been more important to me now than ever, in a year full of major changes, personal and in the world at large. Being forced to spend more time alone in a global pandemic, the ability to look inward is an invaluable commodity. When we feel complex emotions, we tend to turn toward great songwriters who have said what we can’t: Existential dread stuttered from the frantic voice of Radiohead’s Thom Yorke. Anger rupturing from Rage Against The Machine’s Zach de la Rocha. And of course, there’s heartbreak, which has been so elegantly explored from Joni Mitchell, to Elliott Smith, to Bon Iver. But in coping with these emotions, I would have you turn to ambient, at least sometimes. I have, and in doing so I’ve been forced to reckon with myself, to see what’s here now, to move forward.

Ambient alone won’t push you forward, but at least for me, it gave me the quiet I needed to think, and it promised that moving forward was moving towards beauty, because there’s beauty everywhere, especially in the mundane.