Today is Tuesday, July 14th, and in this twenty-eighth episode I’d like to share with you some reflections on one of the questions I have been asked most frequently.
Not so much by ordinary people, or by family members, or by students, or even by clinicians.
But by journalists.
Yes, you understood correctly.
Beyond a thousand surrounding and almost distracting questions, the journalist always wants to know one thing, and one thing only:
“What music would you recommend to our readers to help them face a dentist appointment?”
My answer?
“There is no such thing as music that is good for everyone, at every moment, and in every situation. It is simply impossible. Music is a phenomenon that is far too complex and full of variables. To answer a question like that would mean that we had managed to isolate all the variables implicit in the phenomenon of music. So the reader of your magazine who is going to the dentist tomorrow will be the only person truly able to choose the music that will distract them from the perception of pain during a filling.”
Since an answer like this may sometimes not be immediately understandable, I ask the journalist a question in return.
I ask:
“Have you never happened to listen to a beautiful song — one that gives you goosebumps the very first time you hear it, moves you, makes you want to share it immediately?
So you look for the person you live with — your husband, your wife, your partner, and so on.
You start the MP3 player again, waiting to see your own reaction to that music replicated in them.
And most of the time, it does not happen.
Why is that?
And what is even stranger is this: how is it that, after listening to a piece thousands of times, we almost forget that it exists?
For years we no longer listen to it.
As if music could lose its effect.
Lose its power.”
But in today’s podcast, I would like to share with you my reflections on the beliefs that lie behind this question — a question that is, of course, asked in perfectly good faith.
Why does someone ask me what music they should listen to for a headache, for colitis, or for anxiety?
I imagine that, in that person’s mind, an overlap is created with pharmacology.
Since everyone says that music is good for you, then there must be music that is good for anxiety, and music that is good for short-sightedness.
Continuing with this hypothesis, I might deduce that most people who listen to fifty seconds of Mozart will experience a particular healing effect, and that there might even be side effects if, instead of fifty seconds, they listen to it for fifty minutes.
Continuing on this futuristic journey, nothing prevents me from imagining packets of “auditory tablets” displayed and sold on pharmacy counters: some available on prescription and reimbursable through the healthcare system, others sold over the counter in parapharmacies.
Who knows?
Perhaps one day this will really happen.
Let us be clear: I am not against research, nor against the effort to try to reduce the subjectivity implicit in the experience of an artistic event.
Of course, music struggles to be placed under a microscope.
But this does not exempt us from the shared aspiration that animates us all: to give credibility to our discipline.
And some variables do move in this direction, allowing us to go a little further and outline broad categories.
In other words, we can reasonably say that BPM, dynamic range, melodic contour, interval size, and the degree of variability and unpredictability are factors we have managed to isolate.
And depending on whether their value is high or low, they allow us to place a piece of music somewhere within the range of exciting or calming music.
But what I most want to say to the journalist is this:
those of us who do music therapy, whatever musical experience we decide to offer the person we are working with, we do it together.
It is that togetherness that differentiates us from a pill.
When a doctor prescribes us a drug, they do not even think of taking it together with us.
They prescribe it.
They order a chemical remedy.
I’ll stop here.
We’ll meet again on Tuesday, July 21st, with a new episode of A Light-Hearted Journey Through Music Therapy.