Does music heal your brain?

I just saw a post that said, ”Music can heal your brain! Music can bring back memories to stroke victims!” And I thought, that is so cool! This post really says something about music. And it got me thinking. 

Maybe some of my musical activities have been a compulsive, unconscious desire to overcome all the brain damage from too much alcohol my freshman year in college? 

I am sure that my alcohol consumption was absolutely NOTHING compared to a standard frat boy. But it was still significant, and I definitely have felt less smart since college. Before college I thought I knew everything, so maybe it was the beer? 

Speaking of feeling less smart, after you have children, that emotional state of “less smart” grows in proportion with the size of your mortgage and all the things that you buy to support their upbringing. Clearly, there is some kind of reverse investment going on here. 

For instance, I paid a fair amount of money on hair care products for my daughter Sarah. Two years ago, she shaved her head bald, so isn’t that kind of a reverse investment, where the output of hair is less than the money put into it? 

I mean of course, in the case of your children, it is about your relationship with them. At the time when she had hair, the purchase of said hair care products was a necessity. Anything to keep the atmosphere in the house to a level of some kind of neutrality was a plus when there is a teen aged daughter within. 

Which brings us back to music. It can heal your brain. It can bring back memories. But do I want to remember what that was like? All the stomping and door slamming and yelling and crying? 

Not really. Sarah is a lovely young woman, albeit sans hair, but beautiful, nonetheless. I am really glad she is who she is, and I don’t need to retrieve all of those memories of how we got here—to this place of getting along (finally) and having her be a productive member of society. 

Maybe I don’t really need to justify my musical compulsions to all the good it will do my brain. Maybe my brain is ok as it is, dead neural pathways and all. 

Maybe it is ok just to love music because we love it.

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