I bought Discover magazine's edition called "The Brain."

It seems to cover a lot of things I've always wondered about, especially the article concerning how the brain reacts to music. It site the book called "Musicophilia: Tales Of Music and the Brain" by Oliver Sacks who wrote the movie The Awakening.


"There is no culture without music.There are almost no individuals without music."


He states that people with aphasia, (that are unable to speak due to neurological damage) can sometimes still sing. I know there are days when I can never make sense...nor seem to raise my voice above a whisper..but if I put the radio on and sing , there is this .. divine pulse and with the pattern and tempo to aspire to, I can get back on track. He says people with a huge amount of cerebral disease can still respond to music.


Here are two Q&A's, that I felt compelled to ponder and enthrall in. It feels like being understood and I needs must read the complete book.


Q : In Musicophilia you argue that emotional responses to music may be distinct from our other emotional reactions.What do you see as the difference?


A: I think the emotional responses to music can be unbelievably complex and mysterious and deep.You can be sort of agonized , sort of ecstatic, and you don't know what's happening.You can't even say what the feeling is.The usual feelings just can't begin to match the musical experience.On the clinical side, in some cases, people -- maybe after a head injury or a stroke-- suddenly cease to enjoy music, while still enjoying everything else and while perceiving music perfectly well. And then there's the opposite of this, which gives the title to my book : people who develop a specific need for music..they MUST have it.


Q: It seems strange that music can become a hunger, like the need for food or sex or sleep.


A: I agree. And it can be very , very specific -- because often,you don't just want music;you've gotta have Brahm's or you just have to have that particular pianist. That exact music will speak to your condition and will fill a particular void -- and nothing else can.


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It's like poor Hanslick's theory..does the beauty lie in the composition or in the ..odd boggling emotion...the math or the method...or..the mind?


Airborne Toxic Event's violin intro to 'Sometime Around Midnight'..makes me feel like blissfully shattering glass inside. Amy Lowell's beautiful dome of coloured glass crumpling into braingasms. Regal, formal, swan song, funereal. Romance or glitter or Christmas Eve. The beat like a running horse. Or something graceful. Butterfly wings or saviour's swift footsteps. It seriously feels like something is shooting down the veins in my wrists which the nerves of are in fact damaged and much too sensitive. Or simply tuned in by accident? It's almost like syrup in a cavity. But not bad...and very sweet. Lady Gaga's "half psychotic sick hypnotic got my blueprint it's symphonic.." really IS. Mozart....Beethoven..Massenet..Albinoni....Alice In Chains and their sour bee buzzing elephant-running-insoggysweatpants strains...


Albinoni nearly killed me by proxy-incomplete-crescendo.


Feels like psychology is just catching up to what billions of teenagers know.


I have narrowed down violins...and cellos...(ala unplugged Nirvana, and Darling Violetta...) as my particular choice of poisonous elated seductions.

Curvy, luscious stradovariaii.


If you have seen teh episode of Buffy The Vampire Slayer where Buffy's mother dies, they remove the musical background that subliminally lulls you from one scene to the next.. you are emotionally abandoned, into feeling the silence of the death and the despair that accompanies. An absolute genius bit on Joss Whedon's part. But, what isn't. Do the dance of Joy, Numfar.


Kings Of Leon. Green Day.. fledgling soul chasers.


If I ever fall into a coma (again..)..someone pls..make a mix cd and come save me.


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A stem is a thinker...a blossom, thought.



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I was attempting to explain the hysterical emo-pinata ad on the radio to my mother.

Me: "Well first off do you know what emo means?"

Mom: "Yeah he's that lil red character on sesame street."

Me: "Elmo. That's....Elmo."

*rim shot*

I like it. An we shall come save you. Also pinch grammy's cheeks for me because she is freaking adorable.

Mumble. I've been surprised by some of those offering to burn back up rescue cds..lol. You're not one of them. DUNNAE make me go near my mother. GArhHJAHhjjk.