By Rina Kaur
Sometimes, we experience one of those days. The weight of responsibility piling on you, a heaviness in your heart, a dark cloud hanging over your head. Minor inconveniences you would usually brush aside now take a toll on you. You really wish the coffee tasted better today. Perhaps something triggered this, perhaps it’s just a feeling you unexplainably woke up with today. Yet it’s a feeling all the same. All the stresses mount and it feels like your head could explode any second.
That’s when you pick up your phone, plug in your headphones, and listen to some music to heal your heart. Goosebumps rise on your skin the second the first note is struck. As the singer belts out a couple of lines connected to what you’re feeling, your heart lightens a little. Tears well up in your eyes. Just as the chorus approaches, a rush of emotion washes over you. You almost, if not do, sing along, and you can feel the pain leaving your body as you do. All that tension, all that emotion, and all that inner discord is released.
It’s something we all experience, but why?What is it about the reverberations of an instrument that make us feel something, feel better? Why the singers? Why the actors? Why the poets? What is it about art that draws us into catharsis?
