Music: Your Frenemy
or the pros and cons of life’s audio-enhancement

Imagine if music was never discovered. Life would be awfully dull, wouldn’t it? It makes me uncomfortable just to think what movies would be like if they didn’t utilize music. I’m actually listening to music as I write this piece.
The reason is simple. Music adds color to an otherwise monochromatic life.
Music, is the gravy to life’s fried chicken. (This is the best analogy I can come up with this evening. We’ll see how it ages.)
The heart of music is to take human emotions, and augment them. Musical notes, when arranged in specific orders, hijack our brains to affect our feelings as we listen. Much like how a set of ordered commands make an algorithm produce a specific result every time. Music’s “results” vary only slightly, due to the human factor of association via memory. (A sad love song may affect you more deeply than the next person if it was your “couple song” for a former lover; however, it doesn’t negate the fact that the next person’s sadness will still be augmented if he/she were to hear the song after a breakup of his/her own even if the person hadn’t necessarily directly integrated the song into the relationship that had just ended.)
So, why is music such a frenemy? Simple. It intensifies negative emotions and romanticizes positive ones. It’s such a powerful influence that it even goads us into making decisions we normally wouldn’t make had we been “sober” (not listening to music at the time).
A personal experiment that has become standard practice for me is to go on “music fasts” when I recognize that my disposition has been leaning one way (either jolly or gloomy) for an extended period of time. Regardless if the imbalance was caused by an external event or just plain old random anxiety, I refrain from listening to music as it helps me get my perspective back.
I have realized that often, things are almost never as bad (or as good) as they seem. When music can’t push or pull me left or right, I find it infinitely easier to find my way back to my little gray area of solace at the center. The place where I can see and choose to grab at both sorrow and joy, where both elements are accessible and at my mercy.
Maybe it’ll work for you too. Try it some time :)
