Music, memory, catharsis

[The Blood Brother's abrasive "Jennifer" cuts the tension in my car like a knife.]
S: "What do you like about this music?"
D: "I don't know, there's just something about it..."

This is a dialog that has taken place a number of times over the years, with different artists being the cause for concern. The Blood Brothers are probably the most popular targets of such dismissive interrogations (I can hardly translate the sense of disdain in the voice of the inquisitor). And this morning, I believe I found the answer.

"While the cultured public thought music was just a collection of consonant chords played in neat meter, Stravinsky realized that they were wrong. Pretty noises are boring. Music is only interesting when it confronts us with tension, and the source of tension is conflict. Stravinsky's insight was that what the audience really wanted was to be denied what it wanted" (from Jonah Lehrer's Proust Was a Neuroscientist). If this doesn't get to the heart of the Blood Brothers' caustic cacophony of sound, I don't know what does-the unpredictable changes in tempo, the back and forth between fitful screams and pleading vocals, the abrupt conclusions of songs seeming to only be reaching their climax-these are the aspects of the Blood Brothers that hit me on a visceral level. Literally.

Lehrer's discussion of Stravinsky's genius speaks to a number of intuitions and curiosities that have long accompanied my appreciation of music. It has always seemed that music hits me in a far different way, on a much deeper level, than any other form of art. Schopenhauer placed music as the highest form of art in its ability to "transcend the will" (which I think translates to something like, "takes us out of ourselves," or perhaps more accurately, "breaks us free from our rational selves"). Furthermore, I have pondered for many years what it is in music that seems to tie me more concretely to my past experiences. This curiosity was further intensified by Lehrer's exploration of Proust's method in writing In Search of Lost Time. In that chapter, it is argued that our memories are most saliently tied to taste and smell, because of the way those senses are wired in the brain. This seemed counterintuitive to me, due to my own experience of memories being triggered by particular objects (from sight) and even more so by music. It turns out there is a method to my madness.

When Stravinsky's "The Rites of Spring" premiered in Paris, it inspired a riot. One is struck by the image of a crowd of bourgeois rising up in protest against a ballet, but so the story goes. On Lehrer's account, the plasticity of the brain allows for rewiring when faced with new phenomena. In listening to music, the brain unconsciously seeks patterns and imposes them on our auditory experience. When faced with dissonance, the brain has to a little extra work, and releases dopamine in the process. Dopamine is the neurotransmitter most intimately tied to our feelings and emotions, and in its release we experience a visceral reaction to our auditory inputs. This explains the rise one might feel in one's chest when responding to a song for the first time or experiencing a band's break from tradition in a live show. And more importantly for my purposes, it explains my deep attachments to certain albums and songs. The ones that I always return to when they fit my mood so perfectly. In joy, in anger, or in despondency, the right song is mine with which to identify, no matter how ambiguous the words or the structure might be. It is why I can't listen to Bonnie 'Prince' Billy's live version of "Master and Everyone" without thinking of a particularly emancipatory time in my life; The Decemberist's "Engine Driver" without thinking of a overwhelmingly helpless period; or The Blood Brother's "U.S.A. Nails" without identifying with the ambiguous frustration implicit in its precise imprecision. Because in my own subjective experience, it seems my memories are tied not so much to cognitive reconstructions or narratives, but to the feelings I experienced (or project myself to having experienced) alongside whatever event the memory is tied to. And if a piece of music speaks to the same feeling that coincided with a particular event, it seems no great leap to see the connection. If the soundtrack to a particular event-say, Iron & Wine's Our Endless Numbered Days with a particularly lovely day on the couch with a particularly lovely lady-fits so perfectly with the experience, then how could I expect not to go back to that day every time "Love and Some Verses" pops up on the iPod shuffle?

I think this speaks to the cathartic, as well as the nostalgic, potential of music. When I find myself in a rut and want to feel anything else, to get out of my head, the dopamine distributing dissonance of the Blood Brothers might be all I need. It is why I turn to Leonard Cohen's "Hey, That's No Way to Say Goodbye," when I want to feel the sting of nostalgia tied to simpler times in Nashville. And it is why the randomness of my iPod's shuffle can put me on an unpredictable roller coaster of memories and feelings long thought forgotten.