It is no big secret that I am obsessed with music. I've never understood passive listeners, for whom music is background noise or a rhythmic sound slightly preferable to silence. When I listen, I become possessed by music, wrapped up and enchanted by it, emotionally invested, spiritually engaged, and, in the fullest sense, entranced. It is one of my greatest pleasures, to which I devote a considerable amount of time and indulgence, rolling about in it and filling myself with sound.
A study out of McGill University, therefore, on the emotional arousal and rewards of listening to music, has naturally captured my interest and touched on something important about the way I understand music and the arts.
(If you are not keen on a scientific journal article, you can read the news summary of it here, or a Discovery general interest article here.)
I must pause for a moment, though, to explain a pretty critical aspect of my MFA thesis, which discussed, among other things, the ideas explored in this series of paintings and the rest of the work I did at Pratt.
Consciousness, by some definitions, is a general awareness of thought, more specifically when information travels through the verbal part of the brain. The connection between consciousness and words is the place from where the declarative self emerges, the voice who is "I am" within the self. Conscious thoughts differ from other types of thoughts, as they are the ones we frame with language (however absent-mindedly), and it is this framing that makes them susceptible to socialized or preconditioned responses, psychological inhibitions, associations, and some of the limitations of intelligence, in the traditional sense.
Particularly resonant sensory input, my thesis states, initially bypasses conscious interpretation, allowing for an experience that is first derived in the limbic region, generally understood to be the emotional and reflex-based portion of the brain. Because my thesis was an artistic inquiry, and not a neuroscientific one (though it was based on what I had been studying prior to switching majors as an undergrad), I didn't go into the mechanisms and electrochemical processes for exactly what happens in the brain, but essentially, sensory information is processed differently because we need it more immediately. Seeing a snake or hearing its rattle must trigger fear quickly, instinctively, and with great certainty. The heart-pounding response is equal parts emotional and physiological, but it can usually be calmed with rational thoughts (for example, "that snake is behind glass and unable to harm me").
Was it possible, I wondered, to use the immediacy of sensory information and abstract forms, to tap into that genuine, primal, intuitive emotional response, escaping the word problems of contemporary art? And if this were possible (which I unquestioningly assert it is), can powerful, evocative beauty evoke an intense sensuous level of pleasure akin to rapture?
My thesis claimed yes, that was the goal, and I tried to get at that experience and its philosophical implications (if you reach someone with striking, instinctively experienced pleasure, can you change the way they see the world? and so forth). For my thesis work, I relied on shapes and patterns from nature and especially the movements of water, captured and described in ink, to provoke something visceral and immediate as a gamut to the most personal response. It was, I felt, the best way to tease out what made us happy to be alive.
Music, like visual or other sensory stimuli, initially bypasses the verbal portions of the brain, tapping into what I termed preverbal consciousness. It elicits a powerful, instinctive emotional response first, followed by conscious interpretation. I don't think it's an accident that many of the pieces of music that gave chills in the study were primarily instrumental, post-rock, or electronic, which is to say, basically wordless.
This study on music explored the emotional arousal and "chills" response associated with profound pleasure from music, concluding that the strong emotional feeling was itself the strongest reward. In some ways, it sounds almost simplistic: we like things that make us feel. But when you really think about what that means, compared with intellectual rewards, tangible physical or sensory rewards, and so on, it tells us something about ourself and our place in the universe.
Ultimately I think that I love music because it touches something I can't get at otherwise. When I try to use words or my conscious awareness of phenomena to approach it, it seems to recede and escape comprehension. It is its vexing habit of dissipating right when I think I've grasped it that makes it so enthralling, and this unspeakably lovely quality is what makes me feel so alive.
The goals we pursue in life are often to do with establishing lasting constructs, building wealth or stability, connecting with others and making meaningful relationships. I think it is critical to add to this list the pursuit of profound intensities of emotional arousal, derived through powerful aesthetic experiences. In short, art and music touch your soul, and that's what makes life worth living.
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