This post was originally published on February 20, 2015.
Music has always had a powerful effect on my brain. In my drinking days I’d try to comfort myself when completely depressed by listening to Tori Amos’s “Boys for Pele,” which is full of painfully dark tracks in minor keys. While other albums are filled fiery criticisms of the patriarchy, fast rhythmic screw yous to the sexual repression of women, “The Doughnut Song,” one of my favorites, focused on relationship angst. I’d sob and sob and sob, watch myself sink down so low I wanted to slit my wrists, sob some more and finally press stop.
I’m not sure why, in that deep dark mind-state, I didn’t listen to “Dare” by Gorillaz or “Galang” by MIA. This would have been wiser, wiser than the other times when I whipped out This Mortal Coil and cried myself to sleep to “Nothing But Blood.” It’s not an uncommon phenomenon, but it’s definitely stupid.
But I’m not some cool music snob. In high school I listened to Gregorian chants performed by master chorales, beautiful and haunting stuff with so many different melodies and harmonies running through a single piece, I traveled out of my head to another world. Then there was Beethoven’s ninth symphony, you know the one—it’s Alex’s favorite song in A Clockwork Orange that they used to torture him as payback for pounding in the skulls of his victims, the sick shit.
In the early 90s I’d read that Mozart could soar your IQ if you listened to his sonatas prior to studying or taking a test or doing anything that required a sharp mind. Some scientists have debunked this theory, which is really disappointing—why did they bother doing that? At least give us a placebo effect from engaging in an activity that’s cheap and harmless. Regardless, I’d noticed that his kind of musical complexity did something extra amazing for my brain.
When I’m depressed, which happens a lot (especially when hormonal), my brain just dies. I call it flat-lining—there’s no activity whatsoever. I just lay there, with little ability to get up and to do the things that I know will help me snap out of it. Go for a jog? No energy to put on my sneakers. Read? How can I read when the synapses aren’t even connected to comprehend one stupid sentence. Watch TV? All watching TV does is make me more depressed, and anyway there are no shows that grip me now that Dexter is over. Go to a meeting? Yeah, that I do but how many goddamn meetings can you go to in one day? And most often I have articles to write—I can’t just hide from those in the rooms of AA every day.
Sure, the medication helps, but when it doesn’t, I often just sleep.
Until I prescribed some musical therapy for myself.
The “Hungarian Rhapsody” by Franz Lizst started the process. Have you heard this 10-minute piano composition? Mesmerizing is an understatement, but you’ve definitely heard snippets. Half of the piece has been placed in many Looney Tunes and Merry Melodies cartoons.
My favorite rendition of all time is performed by Bugs Bunny in the 1946 Merry Melodies cartoon Rhapsody Rabbit. Check it out on Vimeo.
“Hungarian Rhapsody” begins with dramatic and intense chords deep in the bass clef keys of the piano (bass clef means below Middle C, and Middle C is the center note of the whole piano). Then it moves into a lilting melody through the mid-range and up to the top of the treble notes, a sort of magical and ethereal cadence that I swear revives my frontal lobe and jump-starts my synapses. The sudden leaps in octaves fires up my brain—you’re down low and whoa, you’re up high. It’s slow, now it’s super fast. It’s quiet, now there’s a crescendo building louder and louder. Then it breaks into this Hungarian gypsy melody, then into the iconic scales up and down that have been used in all those cartoon chase scenes.
My brain can barely keep up.
So when I sit there, with my headphones in listening to every note, every staccato, every allegro, I become one with the present, and my brain gets shocked back into the real world as though I’d just snorted a line of coke.
What’s great about this kind of therapy is a) it’s not illegal b) it costs 99 cents on iTunes and c) all I have to do is stick in my headphones and press a button on my phone and wait to be resuscitated back to life. When I’m so depressed I can barely get out of bed, it’s an awesome option. I can’t go for a jog, I can’t go bake a cake, but I can press play.
The first time I did this I had just been outside chain smoking on my porch. Though it was a lovely Los Angeles afternoon, birds chirping in the 72-degree weather, the green trees sparkling in the reflection of a 3 pm sun, to me everything looked doomed. The leaves on those Jacarandas were brown, the sky grey, the birds’ chirps sounded like screeches from vultures.
Then I played the rhapsody, two times, while sitting in a chair with closed eyes, and a smile spread on my lips. I went out to smoke again, and the scene had drastically changed. The sky was now cobalt blue, the leaves a happy lime-green, the birds euphonic with their little chirps that sounded just like Lizst’s magical scales.
How did this happen?
I looked that shit up on Google. Apparently, music therapy is used to treat depression and behavior problems in children—chilling to Mozart can keep a kid from throwing their toys or pitching fits in the grocery store as well as pay better attention in boring arithmetic classes. Why no one has done a similar study on adults is beyond me, probably because there’s no money to be gained by it. Lizst and Mozart are dead and you can buy their tunes for next to nothing.
The experiment with Lizst went so well I moved on to Mozart, who I’d never really been a fan of. I’m drawn to moody broody stuff like “Moonlight Sonata,” but from what I read, the baroque and upbeat cadence of Mozart is extra beneficial to the brain.
I downloaded the classic “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik” and listened. Then I listened again, and then again. That smile returned to my lips. The next evening, when I was feeling similarly flat, I picked up my headphones and repeated the process. Suddenly, I could get back to my computer and write, suddenly I could pick up the phone and call my best friend and finally I could clean my room.
When you’re sitting there still, with so many instruments playing different parts, listening to every single nuance, tuned into every shift in tempo, you’re meditating. You’re practicing mindfulness. And I swear it rewires your brain.
So yeah, rock me Amadeus.
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