Over three hours bouncing my feet on the dance floor, I felt ecstatic..letting my brain to function on its trance state, my body moves* according to the rhythm. Songs are selected from various decades, 60's, the 80's disco groove, even the Backstreet boys from my stupid teenage years! Clapping and swaying hands, stumping feet, dos-a-dos, How it was fun! but suddenly a song from the turn of the century was turned on, and somehow-- in an immediate reflex, my body stops moving.

My brain flipped over from its trance-euphoric state, to its sane, and then perplexed to somewhere far...The surging feeling that I got afterward was overwhelming--I felt suddenly so... vulnerable and sensitive... The stumping feet, the banging heads, swaying hands and happy faces of my friends surrounds me left me even further back at my little corner..and the happy music in the back drifts me lower to the pit of my head, scanning over box of archives set in my skull's grey labyrinth, flashing bits of colours and voices of people, bits of bliss and pains, all together.

Have you ever felt 'struck' by one or some particular songs? I know a lot of songs are meant to take you to your 'mellowest' state, to send you adrift and depending on your experience at that particular time, you would probably say 'oh it's so me!', associating self to the lyrics sung. Or I know those song using oh-so-superlative-heavenly notion that certain types of people feel 'crap' about themselves whenever they hear these kinds of songs.

But I'm not talking about these kinds of songs. In fact, a lot of songs that struck me are happy-tone songs. And no matter how the song should effectively be designed to drift your mood up, these particular songs actually struck me to the bottom of my emotional level.

I feel like one of Ivan Pavlov's dogs in his 'conditional reflex' experiment, who drools everytime the bells' ringing (as a sign that food is coming), even if the food is not actually served. Such musics act like the same stimuli as was the bell to the dog's brain. I know also everybody acts differently to music. In the spectrum of all humankind, I think i'm positioned in the 'more sensitive' tail. Is it a sign of a 'musical' person? I dunno, but I may have an introvert cognitive sensitivity as a study indicates this trait relates to how sensitive a person is to such stimuli (see Carl Jung's highly sensitive person study). Some other people (from observations of my friends), find also such stimuli in smells (like, the smell of aftershave of one's ex), and for me, for instance, certain albums may associates to some guy from the past, an old friend, or some sceneries that I saw during some travels that I did, or the stressed feeling on last days preparing high school exam.......you might have different stimuli.

Music, I have found is the best archival system to my memory. Each chronological scenes of my life can be mapped by certain set songs that I was hearing at a particular past events or time in my life. It is a background sound that accompanies my brain in dealing with surges of ups and downs. And, like all the propensity of 'scar' at bad events is always greater to good events, those songs accompanying me in my bad times are more deeply ingrained to my memory. Don't get me wrong, I don't get depressed really often. But hey we cannot deny that shit happens, can we?

For the reason that I find that emotions that I get when I hear a song is highly influenced by the emotional state I was when I heard the song, I realize that I should be more careful in choosing musics in my playlists especially at the time of depression. A rule is set :

I cannot hear 'good music' during my down-time, for simple reason that I don't want this good songs to make me feel bad later in life. For this, I have myself a 'so-so' songs playlists.

Or, if I would like to be melancholic (and the time and circumstance allows me), I would turn on old playlists that stimulates somewhat bad memories, and would soak my heart dry with it, the faster, the more efficient it is. ( I know I'm a masochist :D--but hey, it's a good thing that a song can make you cry. It makes you Human in some sense, no? ;p). of course, it's not just about bad memories to stimulate, you can actually pick which sensation you want to feel...which scene of your life you want to 'resurrect' by the song...

On the other hand, I would also start listen to new set of playlist with my considered good musics in the 'good times'--letting the playlists to be reminiscence of my good-ol-times--that would drift me up my emotional level whenever I want later in life.

I am basically playing Ivan Pavlov and using my own brain as my own experiment. :p and probably at some level I can use my playlists for my Abraham-Hicks' way of raising my 'vibrations', emotional level and attaining the Vortex. (Don't ask me more, or ask me what a 'vortex' is. I just figure it might work..)

The system, in my case works as my preference to music changes quite often from one time to another. I explore new musics all the time. This year it's folk indie (Andrew Bird, Fleet Foxes, Beirut, Bon Iver, and sorts) last year was synth-electronics female singers (Imogen Heap, Kate Havevnik, Sia, Lykke Li and sorts), the year before fusion mexican, spanish and baltic songs (Ojos de Brujo, Manu Chao, Natalie, Natalie lafourcade, and sorts) , proceeded by lounge-groove beats (Zero 7, Air, and sorts).

Between good and 'so-so', and 'crappy' music, for me it depends more on melodies, richness of sounds, the goosebumps effect, the jiggy-with-it effect, more than its lyrics. The lyrics can be as shallow as 'skinny dipping in the sea' (c'mon people you know what song this is), but I would call it good music nevertheless, if it has rich melody, rhythm and sounds.

I particularly love musician that acts more like 'sound engineers', exploring and producing sets of 'awkwardly beautiful' melodies from everyday object or their voice. The more complex, the more awed I get, as I know how f***ing hard it is to make awesome music (yea i tried, but my talent is just not there -_-), and I appreciate greatlythose musicians that takes me to eargasm. But anyway, just to remind you, (and only for you who are not so 'numb' musically...) that music can have really some power, to drive your feeling. It's a tool you can use readily :), and this is how I use it.

Ah well, I can list you some of my favorite musics here (in my goods, and in my bads), for souvenir...

Jack johnson, jose gonzalez, jamie cullum, john mayer,john Legend, james blunt, jamiroquai, Zero 7, Morcheeba, Goldfrapp, Air, Royksopp, Cardigans, Oasis, Incognito, Detektivbyran, Fleet Foxes,Yann Tiersen, Imogen Heap, Frau Frau,MGMT,Sia, Joe Hisaishi, Psapp, Passion Pit, Lykke Li, Beirut, Elsiane, Andrew Bird, Bon Iver, Vampire Weekend, Robyn, Manuchao, Kings of Convenience,Sigur Ros, Jonsi, Natalie Lafourcade, Manu Chao, Ojos de Brujo, Parov Stelar, The whitest boy alive, Florence n the machine and of course it's not all of it...

Note:

(ok, I probably didn't 'dance', but 'move according to the rythm' would be more appropriate :p)

(to you who knows me may think i'm not introvert, but I can get crazily, inwardly melancholic!)

(ok I am not blond, but the image is so beautiful anyway)

Labels: favorite, life sampah, music