If Se doesn’t really have a lot going on specifically with music, Si sits at the other end, waiting to tell you all sorts of things about music. Is that good? Is that bad? That depends on how balanced it is.
Si generally
When Si takes in the physical world, it’s not at face value like with Se. Si is taking it in with a connection to something else. Which something else it is depends on the rest of the stack, but there’s that kind of tether in the moment that makes a difference (as opposed to Se, which will offer its pile of sense data to another function after experiencing that data).
This is a weird analogy, but work with me:
Se is like a big pool – you pour into it fill it up and you fill it up and you do something with it afterwards.
Si is like a sink with a drain connected to plumbing – you pour into it and it goes into whatever system is already there.
That makes a difference as to how it sloshes around, how it impacts the environment – a bunch of different things. Se and Si are both gathering, but one is more involved at the time of gathering.
That gets Si associated with routines and memory and the past and things like that, but it’s not clear to me that it ought to be. Si hangs out around those things because having that plumbing-like processing enables them, but that doesn’t put a value on them. Just because you own a nice shower doesn’t mean you shower.
What Si values in music – Vibe (defined)
Se-doms and Si-doms can act so differently around music (e.g., “turn it up!” versus “turn it down!”) that it’s surprising they both care about vibe. But the distinction is undefined versus defined. Se, with its big pool of gathering, is just happy something’s going in. The well-plumbed Si-nk wants certain things in place before pouring stuff in, just like you shouldn’t pour fats/oils/grease (F.O.G.) down your kitchen sink. (F.O.G. is in part what “Foggy Drain (Saponified”) off my first album is named for.)
What things it wants in place depends on the person’s sensory plumbing, so to speak. Upbringing might be part of it, prioritizing the familiar over the new. Being true to a genre seems to be a big part of it; having a known box this song fits in feels better than something that’s unclear (like how you might not pour a liquid down your sink if you didn’t know how your plumbing would process it). To the extent you can find loads of music education and YouTube videos talking about rules of composition, Si promotes that sort of thing (more on this in the next section). The notion of some songs being classics or having classic rock as an American radio format has some Si roots as well.
When Si is too dominant
Every pipe has a diameter. Sometimes, you can’t fit things in a pipe because they are too big. Unhealthy Si might reject a song for not fitting well, in much the same way plumbing rejects a material. It might not be that the unhealthy Si user is antagonistic toward the song; but it doesn’t sit right with them, and that doesn’t feel good.
That can look like a few things. If a song comes along and tries to fuse some ideas together, unhealthy Si might say “that’s not real rock” or “that’s not true country music” and kick it out. (That seems particularly big in country music, where a lot of lyrical themes are also about Si concerns, like family and country; they’re talking about society’s plumbing all the time.) So Si can miss out on a lot of cool stuff that way.
Where unhealthy Si can grind my gears (and I say this as an Si child with parent Ne) is rigid pointing to “the rules” as though they are of law rather than of thumb. Around 2007, a guy at church named Larry Morris – a generally nice old man who always looked about 10% electrocuted – decided to vent to me about a song sung that evening.
And his venting was that the melody didn’t start on the root note of the song, which is the rule. If you’re in the key of C, your first melody note is supposed to be C. That. is. how. you. start. a. song.
I’d never heard of this rule, and my Ne loves to smash rules, so I dove right in and asked where this rule came from. He didn’t have a source; it was just a thing everyone’s supposed to know, I guess (which is why it rankled him that this one song didn’t know). Loads of songs I could name that did not use this rule were irrelevant; the rule was the rule, and we walked away with unchanged views.
So as far as I’ve seen, unhealthy Si can reject certain songs for surprising reasons sometimes, but it also can discourage people from creating songs in the first place.
Some examples
Classics of a genre have Si appeal (although they don’t necessarily when they are made; it can take some time before they are considered fine, just like it takes testing some substances before determining they are safe down the drain). The Beatles firmly have Si appeal for rock now. Examples of too much Si in songs would be any song that is well-produced and sounds like it’s right in the middle of its genre but has nothing to distinguish itself – it fits too well into the background. Those songs are forgettable, so I won’t link any – letting you continue to forget them.
What’s a good example of Si, whether musically or lyrically? I’m going to tell you about the neoclassical dark wave genre for a bit (which is closely linked with martial industrial). It came out of the ‘80s and is generally brooding music, but the neoclassical element likes ancient instruments and brings in a sense of history. Dead Can Dance is the best-known group of the style (if you’ve watched Gladiator, Dead Can Dance’s Lisa Gerrard is the vocalist and co-writer of that soundtrack with Hans Zimmer). “The Host of Seraphim” is a masterwork of Si, having little other than the occasional war drum, a big organ, bright strings, and a ton of vocalizations. It sounds like ancient church music for some unknown land, drawing heavily on established traditions but feeling fulfilling in its own way.
In the Nursery is not that far off from Dead Can Dance, and they’ve had some great examples in this vein. “Dogfight” is the best music I know to feel like you are about to be in an epic historical battle. But if you want a full Si experience, I recommend their 1998 album Lingua. The Bandcamp description bleeds Si as it tries to make the album relatable:
“Lingua explores the emotional global resonance of language through phonemic performances of Mayan, Slavonic, Japanese, Mexican, French, Hispanic and even lost ancient Italian texts about love, freedom, the earth, the universe and the unknown set to shimmering washes of cinematic landscapes.”
Clearly, there’s a lot more going on than just Si. But do you see how much history underlies the concept – how much this is an exploration of the societal plumbing that past civilizations left us, to frame our present? Country music talks about dirt roads and grandparents; Lingua talks about ancient cultures on other continents. They’re both using Si to get where they want to go.
Next part: Te (Extroverted Thinking)
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