There is a special place in each of us for music. Apparently neurologists have located a unique spot in the brain that intercepts music before it makes its way to the better known processing centers. Seemingly it sort of hijacks sound. I am still a bit fuzzy on the details, but am in full agreement without seeing the scans or reading the studies. Experience is usually a more powerful persuader than data. I think I have written about my older brother Jim before. He was five or six years my senior - never exactly sure. Anyhow, he loved music. Played the harmonica, sang in college choirs and musicals. My own unusual knowledge of 1950s rock-and-roll songs is a direct result of listening to his extensive collection of 45s. And that is an important piece of this post.
In his early 40s, again fuzzy here - it was the year NC State won the NCAA basketball championship, 1983? - Jim was at the end of his fight with glioblastoma - a horrible brain cancer they are just now making some small steps towards addressing. I went up to see him. Regular conversation was no longer possible, but his incredible wife Linda was still making that terrible time as tolerable as possible. But that is not the point of this post - music is. You see although Jim and I couldn’t converse in any meaningful way, we could sing. And we did. What is the line from the Janis Joplin song, Me and Bobby McGee,? “We sang every song that driver knew.” Over the course of a few days Jim and I sang up all those songs from that stack of 45s. And he never missed a lyric, never missed a word.
So there is a special place in us for music. Mind? Brain? Soul? I don’t really know where it is, but I was drawn into a further consideration of it this evening. Music is all around me all the time, whether I am drawing or writing, reading, or driving, music is always there, unless those rare instances when some other form of audible media intrudes. OK. So tonight I am doing my “pre-sleep, Reike meditation ritual” which naturally includes music from Pandora on my iPad. I shift the playlists around according to my mood. Tonight I went with my “Thumbs Up” list which is a wildly eclectic playlist of all the songs I have ever clicked on as being a “thumbs up” song. Almost a thousand songs.
Having read recently that even very slight light in your sleeping environment is bad for you, I have returned to using a “sleep mask.” Prevents Alzheimer’s or acid reflux or something. So I’m listening to Thumbs Up, doing my meditation, and I reach up to adjust my sleep mask, and I am surprised to discover that tears are streaming down my face. Not just a little eye watering - real tears. I was taken aback because I wasn’t aware of being in any kind of “tearful state.” No tears of sadness, no tears of joy. Just these tears from nowhere.
Here is what I think is going on. First, there is this human locus for music, that Jim and I had already explored all those years ago. Second, I had chosen all the songs on that playlist as being “thumb worthy.” I liked them. Third, I was in a mindful, meditative state. So that music slammed into my “music locus,” probably making it a bit nuts, so it reacted “normally” and turned on the waterworks. Mind you, it was a rather pleasant experience - far more akin to tears of joy and wonder than sadness. Which makes sense since I had chosen the songs and my taste in music runs far more to joy and wonder than sadness.
No surprise there, eh? Foster Harmony, Enable Beauty and all?
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