Much has been made about the effect of music on the brain, and even upon the mind itself. I've been giving some thought to this lately, thinking about how I experience music, how it stimulates the activity of non-auditory sensory simulation (and even auditory participative simulations), and how memory is involved in simulating a music listening experience.
When I listen to music, I am an active participant. I do not like to listen to music passively. I find it greatly distracting because I want to become involved in what I am listening to. Some people like to dance, and music is integral to dancing. Good music(1) tends to invoke movement from the listener. Snapping or tapping your fingers, swaying, dancing, or pretending to play an instrument are all examples of this. I sometimes visualize myself playing the music I'm listening to as a non-physical variation on the same theme. Other times (dependent on the type of music I am currently listening to) music invokes visual displays. Sometimes it is just colors and shapes that somehow relate visually to what I am hearing. But other times a specific song invokes a specific image, something like a movie, that I see every time I listen to that particular piece. FREX I always see white water rafting during a section of a particular song even though the song has nothing to do with such even by the greatest stretch of the imagination. Yet that is how I relate to the sound of this one particular 4 minutes of music. There is also a fun activity where I play an instrument that is not in the music. As if I were creating something along with the music I'm hearing, or imagining where the artist might have done things differently. I don't know if I am alone in this, but if I know a piece quite well, I can recreate even entire albums fairly accurately from memory. Like having a CD player in your head. When I was a teen, some friends of mine only had 3 8track tapes. One of these tapes was Black Sabbath Volume IV and they played it over and over and over. Even though I was not a particular fan of Sabbath, everywhere I went for several months I internally listened to Black Sabbath Volume IV over and over and over. <G> Related to that, I must note that I don't really listen to music all that much. I definitely don't listen to the radio much, nor do I play my CDs all that much. I might spend an hour a week *listening* to music, yet I hear music constantly. Its with me at all times, sometimes its even a distraction and is hard to turn off. A lot of the time it is stuff that I am making up on the spot, music, lyrics, evolving themes and all. I sometimes wonder if others do this, or if I am....you know....a bit strange. I sometimes think I ought to invest in some recording equipment for my PC so I don't lose all the product of this mental expenditure.<G> The really difficult aspect of my personal experience of music for me to describe is the sense of being spiritually uplifted by music. It can be as mild as being induced into a good mood. But there have been times when I felt like I was front and center in Gods highbeam headlights. That can be a pretty intense feeling. Its like a genuine religious epiphany, an ascension. I'm not particularly religious, nor do I hold strong religious beliefs or faith, even though I do feel like I have something of a spiritual life or a spiritual sense. But I don't think I am actually in contact with God. Its probably that I love something so much that there is a spectacular release of endorphins and reality gets a bit distorted. When it occurs, I feel light. I feel detached from my body, like my *self* is floating above my body a ways. I feel like a light that is not a light is shining on me and through me, illuminating my mind, revealing my self to my self. And I almost always cry, and its almost always difficult to control. Its ecstasy and its agony. I feel something that feels like shame( but might not be), a desire to be greater than I am in my life. It is the most powerful experience of my life. I think in some ways it has improved me as a person, but that's a lot harder to quantify. I would expect that for someone reading this, this all sounds like a piece of some personal mania. "Rob can get a bit freaky at times"<G> But I really wonder if anyone else experiences things like this. I'm sure that some have had religious experiences that are somewhat similar, but I wonder about secular experiences that have a similar effect. What is music like for you? xponent Example Below Maru rob Workings of man Set to ply out historical life Reregaining the flower of the fruit of his tree All awakening All restoring you Workings of man Crying out from the fire set aflame By his blindness to see that the warmth of his being Is promised for his seeing his reaching so clearly Workings of man Driven far from the path Rereleased in inhibitions So that all is left for you all is left for you all is left for you all this left for you NOW... (1) Good music is what *you* like or what is generally popular _______________________________________________ http://www.mccmedia.com/mailman/listinfo/brin-l
