Musings On Music, Why So Powerful
Final 10, thinking out loud
Don’t you think it is strange how a certain set of sounds can completely alter your mindset?
Taking a step back real quick, there are five ways for humans to perceive the world around us; sight, sound, feel, taste, and smell. Seeing as how I lost my sense of smell a few years ago, I found myself wondering about what exactly that meant. If you take all five senses away are you still human? If I only have four of the five senses does that mean I’m only getting 80% of the human experience? How else could I make up for my lost sense of smell? Are there other ways of perceiving the world around us, outside of the five senses humans are typically born with?
Coming from the standpoint of someone who was wondering what senses mean, I found it really perplexing how putting the right sounds in the right order for the right amount of time had created a worldwide billion-dollar industry of music. Nobody seems to think it is weird that every car comes with a radio for music or how every department store is playing music.
Meanwhile, strange outfits catch our eye, or strange smells will change your view of someone, or sticky floors will make you reconsider a restaurant. Music seems to be universally accepted throughout every human civilization, yet there doesn’t ever seem to be many naturally occurring musical elements in our environment. Did our universal sense of music develop from springtime birds singing their repetitive 10-second songs? Why do we like songs between 3-4 minutes in length, if birds are the nearest musical component and they only sing for a couple seconds? I don’t know.
What I do know is the right song can make a huge difference in my workout mindset. I’ve done music reviews here on this page before and I am pretty sure they have all been songs that grip me in such a manner that they will change my workout mood from 10% barely-got-to-the-gym-this-morning attitude to 110% IM-GOING-TO-LIFT-THIS-WEIGHT-OVER-MY-HEAD-WHILE-I-SQUINT-SO-MY-EYES-DONT-POP-OUT-OF-MY-HEAD!! attitude. It is the best when I find a song that will put me in the lifting mood, but those type of musical opinions only last for a little bit. Don’t get me wrong, some songs are awe inspiring but listening to them on repeat every day for 45 minutes only keeps me motivated for so many days. I am constantly on the lookout for the next awesome get-me-jacked-up song.
Those are my experiences though. Other people have songs that make them sad or reminiscent. Some songs make you feel patriotic or other songs make you pissed off.
I don’t know for sure but I think it is because music is a little story, and when I’m feeling 10% at the gym but I put on the story about being 110% it gets me to view myself as being a part of a better story. I think it is sort of like how you can put on a costume or uniform and you act as if you embody the essence of what you’re wearing represents.
I don’t really have a final conclusion to this chain of thought, but I do try and pay attention to the things that catch my interest. I hope I can do nothing but pay attention to the things that catch my interest, instead of always having to force myself to care about things that make time go slower, not faster.
A good song is always over sooner than it feels like it should be. What other stories in my life, both mini and epic, always seem to be over sooner than they should be?
When I was in the Army, I used to spend more time thinking about how my life was like a beautiful piano performance and each job I had in the Army was like a single note of a life well lived. It is hard to tell if a single note is good, if the people at each duty station only heard that one note. I am the only one that will know the entire performance of my life so is the overall experience happening is such a manner that the one-person audience will be satisfied with how it ends?
I don’t mean to generate some grand observation, but I do find it really interesting how the right song can make or break a workout. It is as if the absolute best person is always inside me and the right song can help unlock him. Specifically, the best person I want to be at the gym is someone who is motivated about getting a good pump and for some reason music helps make him come out.
Who am I?
What are the forces at play in deciding how I behave?
Do I control my thoughts or do my thoughts control me?
Why does music do what it does to us?
How do I find other shortcuts to unlocking the best parts of me?
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