Shades of Music & Me - How Music Helped.

“A strange art – music – the most poetic and precise of all the arts, vague as a dream and precise as algebra” ~ Guy de Maupassant

“Where words fail, music speaks.” ~ Hans Christian Anderson

“Without music, life would be a mistake.” ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Last year (and a half) has been a challenge for us because of the ongoing global pandemic. Most of us have had to let go of our comfort zones and step into unfamiliar, unknown spaces. My constant companion in this time has been music. It has been that silent yet understanding friend who gave me company and space to be me while I studied, took a walk under the skies, continued with my daily routine/chores, or tossed and turned in my bed, troubled by various thoughts brought on by the raging pandemic.

Music, a single word that means a hundred things for me, all at the same time. It is one of those special gifts of life with which I can instantly connect and escape into. Music has always had an emotional presence in my life, and it has been like the heartbeat within me. Just like our emotions, music has multiple layers, guises, shades, forms, and colors. It can make me smile, overwhelm me, or bow my head in gratitude. It can inspire me to reach greater heights, uplift me from disappointments, fill me up with pride, or move me to tears in sadness. In painful times, music fills me up like a river rushing through a valley, washing away the hurt, yet leaving the paint untouched.

It helps me disconnect from everything around me - anxiety, feelings, thoughts, worries and get transported to a completely different world. I have often found myself reliving memories (pleasant/unpleasant), travel back and forth in time to a different place/person while listening to some of my favorite songs, where I am happy, light, free.

A place where no one is waiting to pass judgments, where you feel understood and comforted till you’re ready to get back to this world rejuvenated, recovered, relieved, relaxed, recharged. This close link between music and ever-changing emotions is probably the reason why it’s almost impossible for me to pick one favorite piece of music.

During the pandemic, I got more curious to understand music and read about how music is a sound wave in pattern, its mathematical basis. How whenever our brain is successful in recognizing and predicting a pattern, it's rewarded with dopamine.

Previous research has consistently shown that music-evoked pleasure is accompanied by physiological changes which are similar in the autonomous nervous system, as well as modulation of the mesolimbic reward pathway, to those found in response to primary (such as sex or food) and secondary rewards (e. g., money) (Ferreri et al., 2019).

Jeff Smith, a music professor at Stanford University, explains, “Music triggers the release of neurotransmitters like dopamine – the ‘feel-good’ hormone – and serotonin, which contribute to the euphoric feeling we get when we hear our favorite song.”

All along life’s beautiful and at times uphill journey, it has been music that put me to sleep, music that woke me up, and music that kept me going in a never-ending stream of soundwaves, thoughts, words, emotions. It speaks to me in different languages, different colors. But most of all, it understands me and lets me be me.