I often listen to instrumental music as a backing to conversations or work. No lyrics, no distractions - just something atmospheric to fill the room while I chip away at the day’s responsibilities. But every so often, a piece reaches out, grabs me by the throat, steals my consciousness, and demands that I experience it immediately and completely.
I was having a conversation on the morning drive in to work with my wife as the final movements - track 9 to 12 of Maurice Ravel’s Le Tombeau de Couperin (orchestral version) hit the airwaves on 90.9. What started as elegant background ambiance suddenly became a full-blown emotional ambush. I was immediately taken out of the conversation. No words. No context.
I commented that it was incredible that the complex emotions surrounding "turmoil" could be so deeply and perfectly reflected in music in a way that I don't think would be possible in many other medium.
My wife had remarked that it was giving her the feelings of adventure, starkly contrasting with my own experience.
Obviously, out of our deep love of debate, validation, and correctness (winning is essential in a relationship), I decided to give it a quick deep dive and learn more about it's history. That was a clear mistake.
It ended in a visceral, involuntary leaking of the eyes. I found myself at my desk, helpless to stop it - completely overtaken by a resonance I couldn’t contain.
The Sound of Turmoil Without Words
There’s a strange, almost ironic beauty in how Ravel, a man known for his intense emotional restraint and compositional control, managed to translate turmoil - the single word I could grasp at to describe what I was experiencing - into music so fluid, so precise, it felt like hearing my own internal conflict played out across a century.
And this wasn’t some indulgent melodrama. It was elegant, refined, even joyful in places. The Menuet dances with gentle nostalgia. The Rigaudon bursts with rustic energy and brightness. But under the surface? It aches. It weeps. It bleeds. It refuses to collapse.
I later learned that Ravel composed each movement in memory of friends lost to World War I. It’s a memorial - a tombeau, in the old French sense - but not a funeral dirge. It’s a tribute that refuses to surrender beauty, form, or grace in the face of unspeakable loss.
Grief with a Mask of Grace
And maybe that’s why it hit me so hard.
Because I know what it means to keep things bottled up. To walk through the world with composure while carrying pain, sickness, and the slow, heavy drag of a body and mind that don’t always feel like they want to cooperate with life’s pace.
Like Ravel, I often attempt to live in full control - holding emotions close to the chest, seeking solitude as a sanctuary - not out of coldness, but survival. And in this music, I saw myself. Or rather, I heard the self I rarely let speak.
There’s a line between wanting to live joyfully - to soak in the beauty of children growing up, of the small wonders in a quiet room - and being yanked back by pain, by the reminder of our own mortality. Ravel’s music lives in that in-between space, where joy and grief, motion and stillness, life and death coexist.
A Shared Wound on the Tapestry of Time
The only resolution I had, joking with my wife later, was to mainline Coconut Mall from Mario Kart just to emotionally reset. I was begging Le Poisson Steve to save me and help me reach a composed state. And yet... the truth is, that moment - eyes leaking - was sacred. Not embarrassing. Not inconvenient. Sacred. Thankfully I have a private office now.
What Ravel did over 100 years ago shaped me, in real time. He left behind a wound on the tapestry of humanity - one stitched with elegance and pain - and now, it’s part of my own. And isn’t that what it means to be human? To leave behind not just work, but impact. Resonance. A part of ourselves in the minds of others.
That’s what this is. A collaboration across time. Composer and listener. Memory and present. Me and you.
Carrying It Forward
I’m sharing this not to be poetic or pedantic for the sake of it, but because I think this is what art is supposed to do. This is why we create. Why we build. Why we talk to one another. It’s not about leaving perfect things - it’s about leaving true things. Moments that connect. Threads that weave us together across grief, time, language, and identity.
So this is me, a man in control - with involuntarily leaking eyes - offering sincere thanks to Ravel for what he left behind. And to anyone else who’s ever been ambushed by a piece of music, or a painting, or a moment too honest to ignore: I'm here with you in this moment.
We don’t have to cry.
We do have to carry it forward.