Emo legends Mineral
I recently came across the term hagioptasia, coined by musician Daniel Laidler. It refers to a fleeting sense of significance and specialness, which eludes explanation. Laidler describes this experience, and how it’s a core part of nostalgia, in a blog post published last December. He challenges the commonplace notion that nostalgia is merely a sentimental longing for the past; instead, he locates the meaningfulness of nostalgia in this feeling of hagioptasia (meaning ‘holy vision’). We desire not a recreation of the mere events of the past but how we felt in those moments: the “inexplicable feeling of enchantment”, an elusive “magical quality”, which often imbues events in our childhood. Laidler defines hagioptasia as “a universal human tendency to perceive certain people, places, or things as possessing an abstract quality of ‘specialness’ or desirability.” It is like a preternatural quality that hangs in the atmosphere.
In 2020 research published in Personality and Individual Differences, Laidler and psychologist John A. Johnson found support for the idea that hagioptasia is a distinct psychological trait. Their research found that around 80% of people are familiar with this ineffable sense of specialness from early childhood. Laidler offers some evolutionary perspectives on why this tendency exists:
But why would humans naturally possess a trait like hagioptasia? Strong clues lie in the universal ways it shapes behaviour and emotions. For instance, a deep yearning for one’s homeland or kin may have provided evolutionary advantages, fostering loyalty, shared values, and strong social bonds within early human groups…. Viewing hagioptasia as an innate function of the mind, evolved to drive us to desire and value certain things, explains its abstract, indefinable nature. This sense of desirability wasn’t meant to be understood – only to influence behaviour. Its ‘timeless’ quality of authenticity may also stem from its deep evolutionary roots, shaping perceptions and actions across countless generations.
The point about hagioptasia not being understood, instead only being felt and driving our behaviour, reminds me somewhat of Arthur Schopenhauer’s theory of romantic love. The latter saw the feeling of love in evolutionary terms: romantic love serves the purpose of procreation, thus ensuring the continuation of the species. And like hagioptasia, romantic love is an elusive, ineffable quality of specialness or ‘magic’ (except it is directed towards a specific person). I critiqued Schopenhauer’s theory of romantic love in a previous essay, so I need not get into the issues with the theory here; I bring it up only to show how the intensity or significance of certain feelings may indicate their evolutionary import.
However, we don’t have to – and shouldn’t – be reductive when offering such a perspective. Laidler certainly doesn’t come across as reductive when discussing hagioptasia: he isn’t arguing that this feeling of specialness is nothing but the workings of evolution by natural selection. Regarding the importance of hagioptasia in our lives, Laidler states:
[Hagioptasia’s] influence has been interpreted in countless ways; as spiritual insight, sacred meaning, ‘heartfelt’ feelings, or artistic sensibilities. Movements like Romanticism and contemporary art reflect attempts to capture and amplify its effects. Religion, art, music, fashion, celebrity culture, and status symbols all exploit our hagioptasic tendencies.
On this point, I want to focus on the expression of hagioptasia in music, specifically emo music. ‘Emo’ was a shorthand way of referring to the emerging genre of ‘emotional hardcore’ bands in Washington, D.C. in the 1980s – such as Rites of Spring and Embrace – indicating a move towards emotional, confessional lyrics in hardcore music. These sorts of lyrics remained in the emo bands of the 90s, many of whom shifted away from emo’s hardcore punk roots and incorporated indie rock and math rock approaches instead (this would come to be known as the subgenre of Midwest emo).
The stereotype of emo is that the lyrics are all about angst, sadness, mental health, loneliness, social alienation, young love, and heartbreak. However, the emotions expressed in early emo bands were not limited to just negative ones, which many people associate with the genre as a whole. These latter associations became most evident when emo went mainstream, beginning around 2003. In the mid-2000s, bands like Taking Back Sunday, My Chemical Romance, Brand New, and Hawthorne Heights would come to stand for what ‘emo’ is in most people’s minds: unhappiness, despair, breakups, betrayal, falling out with friends, wanting to escape your hometown. But emo music is often about other themes and emotions, too. One particularly common theme is nostalgia (sometimes this is tied to the highs and lows of romantic love, but not always.) ‘Soco Amaretto Lime’ by Brand New, off their 2001 album Your Favorite Weapon, is a case in point: the track is essentially an ode to nostalgia for one’s youth.
I was thinking about this theme in emo music recently since many emo bands use months of the year or days of the week in their band name, title tracks, or lyrics. (This isn’t exclusive to emo, of course, but I think it’s particularly noticeable in this genre.) We have bands like Thursday, Taking Back Sunday, The Early November, and Sunday’s Best, and title tracks such as ‘February’, ‘July’, and ‘SoundsLikeSunday’ by Mineral, and ‘June’ by Penfold. Our hagioptasic tendencies mean that we often imbue certain days, months, or years with a feeling of specialness, which we yearn to experience again. Emo lyrics are often highly nostalgic in this way.
More generally, I think one band that exemplifies nostalgia in their lyrics is Mineral (my favourite 90s emo band). The singer Chris Simpson, in many tracks, waxes lyrical about mundane things and events, but they’re not boring to listen to because we can recognise the hagioptasia behind them, magnified by the feeling stirred by the instrumentation. Mineral tracks that come to mind here are ‘If I Could’, ‘M.D.’, and ‘ALetter’. Raindrops on a windshield, costumes worn during one Halloween during childhood, and a birthday card received when one was seven: these all stand out as significant moments. The mundane can become sacred because of hagioptasia, and this is something often encapsulated in emo music. This genre is not just for teenagers going through difficult emotions; it might speak to anyone who has experienced the universal feeling of nostalgia. (For those who were emos in their youth, listening to this kind of music now can lead to meta-hagioptasia: nostalgia for music about nostalgia.)
Hagioptasia may be one reason why we’re seeing an emo revival (which began in the late 2000s). While some emo lyrics can be cliché and cringeworthy, many emo revival artists retain the emotional earnestness that fans have appreciated since the mid-80s, when the genre was born. This includes honest expressions of hagioptasia, an emotion which, as Laidler argues, “is a reminder of our shared humanity and the unseen threads linking our past, present, and aspirations for the future.” To ‘make emo great again’ is to ‘make emotions great again’, including the ones most significant in our lives: those that resonate most deeply within us.
