Finding Ourselves Within Music

When I was a boy, music was like a friend to me. I would make up sounds on the piano by pushing down several notes at a time, over and over again, listening to the different shades of colour as I shifted notes, learning to hear how they blended together or clashed. The sounds helped me work through my feelings, whether joyful, curious, anxious or complicated. As my interest in music finally evolved into a research career, I’ve come to understand that the ideas and sensations contained within music are densely packed, capturing complex feelings that we acquire from whole life periods, acting like a magic coin with all of our memories emanating from one side and our future possibilities emerging from the other.

“ The capacity of music to condense complex emotions and memories into embodied thoughts and feelings is one of its most powerful ingredients.”

For the past 30 years I have been trying to understand the mysteries hidden within music and the great power it can have, not