1) Music seems to have the closest link to my emotional state of anything short of romantic relationships. It’s rather trivial to hack my emotional state into mellowness with a song like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paeNnR33i5Q, or into an aggressive upbeat state with something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO6giM9UAv0, or appreciation of civilization with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U. No other form of art can do anything near as much for me—most of them I appreciate on an intellectual level, but music is heavily emotional as well.
2) I’ve always listened to a lot of it, which means that there’s a whole mess of assorted nostalgia attached to it.
3) Similarly, silence sounds unusual to me. I don’t mind a bit of it, but too much(at least, in a context where music is possible) creates a distinct sense that something is missing unless I’m engrossed in something else.
4) I find that a minor distraction actually improves my focus sometimes—giving my brain a B-plot, so to speak, short-circuits a lot of wandering thoughts. Music, especially music I’m familiar with, gives my brain something to latch onto when it’s idling that can easily be pushed back into the background.
1) Music seems to have the closest link to my emotional state of anything short of romantic relationships. It’s rather trivial to hack my emotional state into mellowness with a song like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=paeNnR33i5Q, or into an aggressive upbeat state with something like http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZO6giM9UAv0, or appreciation of civilization with http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FAvQSkK8Z8U. No other form of art can do anything near as much for me—most of them I appreciate on an intellectual level, but music is heavily emotional as well.
2) I’ve always listened to a lot of it, which means that there’s a whole mess of assorted nostalgia attached to it.
3) Similarly, silence sounds unusual to me. I don’t mind a bit of it, but too much(at least, in a context where music is possible) creates a distinct sense that something is missing unless I’m engrossed in something else.
4) I find that a minor distraction actually improves my focus sometimes—giving my brain a B-plot, so to speak, short-circuits a lot of wandering thoughts. Music, especially music I’m familiar with, gives my brain something to latch onto when it’s idling that can easily be pushed back into the background.