Emotional Rescue

A few days ago, as I am wont to do, I foisted some music on Lisa. (Not that she's all that unwilling, mind you.) We watched the classic album series dvd for Elton John's, "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road." The amazing documentary series gives the inside stories on the making of great albums, with interviews, archival footage from the recording sessions, and my favorite, extra features where the musicians explain the hows and whys in intimate, new demonstrative performances.

So, there's Elton, in a studio, playing the piano part for the song, "Funeral For A Friend." To hear it this way, pouring out of my 5.1 surround sound system, is at once stunning, revelatory, and emotionally gripping. As we listened, I had Lisa stand in a part of the room to hear the cascade of sound like I did, to let it flow over her. And then I said, "Do you hear that?" Of course, what I really meant was "Do you FEEL that."

Absolute magic, it was. One of those moments where words don't explain the emotions that kidnap your mind, body and soul. That is exactly what music is to me, and I love sharing it with people who will let me take them hostage.

So, then, comes a new article called "Why Music Moves Us," from Scientific American (read here) to scientifically explain all this, best as they can. Here's a favorite bit of mine from that article:

Throughout recorded history, people have attempted to explain music’s sway over the human spirit. Music has been labeled everything from a gift of the heavens to a tool of the Devil, from an extension of mathematics to a side effect of language processing. Charles Darwin was famously stumped by music’s ubiquitous presence around the world: man’s predilection for music, he wrote in 1871 in The Descent of Man, 'must be ranked among the most mysterious with which he is endowed.'

Indeed, music is the universal language.What do you think? Have you ever heard a song or piece of music that spoke to you?