Which Came First? The Music or the Feels?
Music is one of those things that has the power to grab you by the lapels and pull you back to a specific moment. From allowing time travel to offering space for departed loved ones to exist within, there’s something to be said about the influence of song. Perhaps most intriguing, though, is how music comes to encapsulate our experiences, anchoring our memories in a single track.
For instance, do you remember the first slow song you danced to at prom? Probably not - but I can almost guarantee that you’d remember the song playing on the radio in your high school boyfriend’s car when he kissed you for the first time. Fast forward to the heartbreak...you may cringe, but you definitely remember that angsty, ‘fuck love’ anthem you had on loop for almost two months.
The human experience is full of emotional turbulence, and music has a long history of capturing the naked truth of these ebbs and flows. Grief, joy, loss, and renewal - music is the one channel by which we can ensnare the fleeting things in the world around us. The world which seems, at times, to move too damn fast.
Music also helps us feel that we are understood. In this way, it has served to connect us to our humanity for many, many moons. Joy, pain, and everything in between...music doesn’t claim to hold all the answers, but rather, it validates that we are all pondering the same phantasmic imaginings.
When we think back to specific moments in our lives, there are five essential senses that we can use to tap into these memories - yet music is unparalleled in its ability to bring us right back. There’s certainly something to be said about its supernatural capacity to conjure emotion from a single chord.
There have actually been scientific studies conducted with both naive and expert listeners that suggest that this is true. Don’t believe me?
Certain chords played on the strings scored moderately high on the dimension of ‘nostalgia/longing,’ which is usually held as a musical emotion rising only from extra-musical connotations and conditioning, not intrinsically from the structural features of the music.
There is a tangible element to music, which plays a huge role in how we perceive our emotions, in accordance with it. Basically, music really does make us feel things, man. That’s pretty powerful.
Like a trusty old friend, music is always there. Whether you need a pick-me-up (obviously The Who), a heart-to-heart (give me Joni Mitchell or give me death), or just a good cry (hello, Moody Blues) - music will never let you down. How many people can you say that about?