Listening to Music is An Investment
You may turn away now if you are thinking this is something that can get you rich with, sorry, that wasn’t what I meant by investment. But if you are an avid music listener (you don’t have to be avid actually, as long as you listen to music), you might want to read on.
I know, “investment” sounds like a corporate word, tainted and sullied by materialism and greed, but this is the best I can think of. It is not so much of a financial investment, but of a deeper, more emotional and personal level.
Now, I am no music connoisseur, my scale and depth of musical knowledge is that of a teacup, but I do relish in its splendor through my own means — from the frequent plug-ins during commute, to the occasional serenades to slumber.
The input of music into your ears is like the dunking of ephemeral coins into a bottomless piggy bank made up of neurons. These familiar musical notes of your favourite songs get wired into your brain for future use. And what might fleeting vibrations of air be of use for?
Nostalgia.
Have you ever heard a song you haven’t heard in a while and are immediately transported to a space and time in your memory, hidden under cobwebs and dust in the desolate corners of your brain, regions that you never knew existed? Reliving a footage at that point in time, what you were doing, where you were, where you were going, who you were with.
We often associate memory with our vision so much that we forget that our other senses are just as, if not more powerful, than our eyes in being able to hit us with a nostalgia brick, right in the head.
And as you listen to that song, everything seems so real, yet so hazy and surreal. A fuzzy quality like a blurred image. You lose your grip on the present and start trying to point out the exact moment you are currently reminiscing, and at times failing to do so. It sends an aching to your heart about a simpler time, ensnares you in a belief of a happier past memory you don’t want to get out of.
I think there is a certain allure in this prolonged delay, of not listening to a certain song and then hearing it or playing it a long time later, it is as though…
…there is a sweetness that rolls of your tongue, then slightly giving way to bitterness — akin to an orange peel — like what nostalgia usually does to us when this sensation happens.
So listening to music is an investment, an investment into time, into our good ‘ol friend nostalgia, entrusting him to bring back to us the rose-tinted memory we crave and love so much.
Remember, whenever you are listening to music, it is much more than the gratifying moment of the now, it is also the delayed gratification of the then in the future. And it is the most bittersweet of things you can experience.
This article was originally posted on Medium, 5 July 2016
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