the tension is the release

why can't I stop with the waltzes already

Playlist cover art is “Evening Star III” by Georgia O’Keeffe (1917)*

This playlist of literally all waltzes was made in August, but I did not write about it.

Actually, a gargantuan version of it was made in August, with help from Instagram. I posted in my stories that about 75% of the time when I hear a song I immediately like, it’s in 3/4 (the time signature of a waltz). I had started a playlist of some of my favorites, and I asked if anyone else had any favorite waltzes. So many people did. So I just added all of them.

The time signature determines how many beats are in a measure, or phrase of music. But it’s also intuitive, almost textural. You can feel it. Listen to any of the songs on this playlist if you’re unsure that you could identify a waltz. It’s swoopy, circular, meandering, but fiercely grounded. It’s the cadence of a kite in the wind, or a kid spinning lackadaisically on a tetherball pole, head tilted all the way back, chin tipped to the sky, almost tripping but never falling.

This playlist is that big one edited down, and because I’m in charge here I kept most of the ones I had originally thought of. Including the song that sparked all of this — “Morning Pages” from Japanese House’s incandescent new album In The End It Always Does. A song about returning to someone, about boomeranging back, about remembering someone over and over and never knowing them.

I was waiting to pare down the big playlist and write about it because I wanted to hit the dead center of why I love waltzes, why they feel essential. But I couldn’t do it. August melted away like it does and I kept listening to all the waltzes I’ve loved for years (Elliott Smith really loved a waltz) and instead of knowing I just ended up feeling.

It was when I listened to Strawberry Runner’s new self-titled album a few days ago that something coalesced. The track “Breakup 2” came on and I immediately loved it and of course

it’s a fucking waltz

So I came back to the question, and an answer began to take shape, though it remains mysterious as I believe waltzes prefer to be.

Waltzes are the tension and the release.

There’s a reason they’re the dance you do with a partner that takes you as close as you can be to a body, and then spins you away, held by a mysterious gravitational pull on the downbeat that you cannot see but can always feel.

Is there anything more romantic or yearning than being spun away and back by forces you cannot see, but can feel?

The beats often feel like they shouldn’t fit, that the 1 is going to come too fast, that the 3 is taking too long, but it always comes back to the 1 right on time. Small exhilaration, perpetual soothing.

They’re often so sad, because waltzes are the halfway point between lift off and landing. They’re circles. I tried to explain to someone why I say waltzes are circles and I couldn’t get the words right.

It’s because the downbeat, the 1, is the slam of the screen door. It’s the arrival and the departure. The 2 and 3 are where you can run as fast and as far as you want, but you’ll always be pulled back to the 1. Waltzes are foiled jailbreaks. They are hometown curses. They are M.C. Escher stairs.

Even when you slow it way way down, the waltz creates a world that you can never leave. Sometimes you don’t want to, because it’s so beautiful even if it’s sad (this might be why Elliott Smith loved waltzes so much).

Other time signatures allow for escape, for change and growth and a true parting. For a sprint out the door and down the road. But not a waltz. If you’re going to dance, you’re going to slow down, you’re going to look at the thing at the center of all that spinning until it crystallizes. You’re going to breathe and trust that the 1 will arrive on time and that you’re exactly where you need to be. You’re going to come home, whether it’s to a lover or to loneliness.

Maybe there are only a few beautiful things in this world that you cannot escape — love, grief, and a waltz.

*I want to nuzzle this piece, to rub my lips on the red and my cheek on the blue, graze my chin on that watery graygreen, and press my forehead to the center yellow and breathe deep with my eyes wide open so the very edges of my vision are colored with the orange of dying leaves. It feels like the abstracted colors of someone’s eyes when you’re allowed to be very close to them. It feels like it wants to be close. I cannot and will not explain it. I also will not do it unless MoMA gets really cool about that kind of thing.