A friend of mine has started doing digital art. Occasionally she'll share pieces with us that she hasn't published anywhere looking for feedback or title suggestions. Recently she shared one and asked what it should be called, to which I said “Untitled”, and suggested that she could enter into her untitled body of work. There were chuckles and groans. I meant it sincerely but didn't do a decent job of expressing why, which I'd like to dig into a bit more here.
Bear with me. I think about this in a few different directions.
My favourite song of all time is one called Untitled 1/2 by a band called The Appleseed Cast. It's held that position for me for about 25 years at this point, having been released in 1998, with me picking up awareness of it around 1999-2000. (I discovered them accidentally while trying to find the band Apples in Stereo, which someone I'd met online had recommended. Coincidentally, that person shares the name of the friend who now does digital art. They are not the same person). It's an instrumental song and is the last “titled” track from their debut album The End of the Ring Wars. I never knew if it was 1/2, like one of two, or 1/2, like half, as when I first heard it on the album there was no way of knowing. I'd never heard it spoken aloud outside of my own voice. (I still don't know.)
The song itself is beautiful. While instrumental, it has a saxophone throughout that almost stands in as vocals, cutting against the grain of the melody and beat as often as it works with them. It walks softly alongside before roaring vividly, pushing the tune into near cacophony; distortion and percussion the only things keeping it from collapsing into a sort of scream. As the saxophone wraps up the guitar, bass, and drums race you towards the end of the song with a steadily increasing pace. It ends abruptly. Well defined and understood. A great conclusion to the album.
And while it's in the spirit of the album, late 90's “emo” (we'll revisit why I put it in quotes another time), something about it stands aside. It's not that it's instrumental, it's not even the saxophone. There's something about its entirety that expresses a need to not give it a title. That it should remain unstated, or it might somehow diminish its overall beauty.
An Icelandic post-rock band named Sigur Ros did something similar for one of their full albums. Their third album title is simply a set of empty parentheses, ( ). It has 8 songs, titled Untitled #1 through Untitled #8, and somehow more interesting, the lyrics of each song are a made up language called “Hopelandic”, which in essence, is gibberish Icelandic. (I don't just say that because I don't speak Icelandic, it's a known fact of the album.) The album moves through two phases, opening a bit lighter, then concluding darker. I discovered it around 2003 while I was in college, and it was something I took with me on midnight walks in the snow around the campus on a discman frequently. Sometimes for good reasons, sometimes for bad. It set a wonderful soundscape for a main character moment. The vibe it provided could be whatever I needed it to be at the time.
And I think that's it. My belief in the value of 'Untitled', and why I was being sincere with the naming and idea of an untitled collection of works. Thinking about my friend's journey with her art, and the eschewing of traditional titles in these examples, it helps capture the power of 'Untitled'. It's the invitation it gives the observer to find their own meaning -- a prompt to embrace the personal resonance, free from the artist's direction. It can remind us that not everything needs a label or clear definition. In a world where we can't help but categorize and explain, there's beauty in things that resist such confinement. 'Untitled' offers us a space where art, music, and life can coalesce in an open and undefined space. Leaving room for the true beauty of expression that brought them forth in the first place.
I think that's a lovely reason to leave something untitled.
<3 flurp