The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature (11 page)
Read The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature Online
Authors: Daniel J. Levitin
BOOK: The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
11.21Mb size Format: txt, pdf, ePub
The proper hallucinogenics, such as LSD, psilocybin, peyote, and mescaline, each have unique effects, but what is common is that they may add to this time-stopping quality a sort of merged sensation or synaesthetic experience: Input from the various sensory receptors seems to merge, and sounds can evoke flavors, smells can evoke touch, and so on. For reasons not entirely understood, but related to action on the seratonergic system of the brain, these drugs also create feelings of unity with those people and things around us. (Serotonin is a neurotransmitter involved in the regulation of sleep, dreams, and moods—it is the chemical system on which Prozac acts.) The ultimate expression of these feelings of connectedness occurs when musicians take hallucinogenics together, tripping together, playing together, and experiencing ecstasy together. This shared neurochemical and spiritual experience has been a sacred foundation of Native American ritual (in both the northern and southern hemispheres) for centuries. In our own lifetime, the Grateful Dead tapped into this and formed powerful connections with those members of their audience who also took LSD, leading to the perception of an intensely synchronized experience between artist and audience. LSD users listening to Grateful Dead music describe the experience using metaphors from electricity: “It feels like I’m
plugged in
to them”; “we’re on the same wavelength”; “I get an electric charge listening to Jerry solo.” Jam bands such as Phish and the Dave Matthews Band extended the tradition through the 1990s and 2000s.
plugged in
to them”; “we’re on the same wavelength”; “I get an electric charge listening to Jerry solo.” Jam bands such as Phish and the Dave Matthews Band extended the tradition through the 1990s and 2000s.
As ubiquitous as drug taking seemed to be in the sixties and seventies, it really represented a counterculture movement, practiced by a minority of people, and by people who were either in the avant garde or at the fringes of the culture, depending on one’s perspective, pro- or anti-drug respectively. I was surprised, then, when my friend Oliver Sacks told me about some of his own drug-induced adventures when I last visited him in New York, adventures that took place in the Topanga Canyon region of Los Angeles in the 1960s. As a neurologist, he had been especially curious about the action of drugs on the nervous system, and wanted to see for himself what the phenomenal experience was like. “I once had a musical synaesthetic dream,” he started, “involving musical Pringles potato chips. In my dream, I was eating from a tube of Pringles, and as they crunched in my mouth they would play a symphony or a concerto, each Pringle playing a few bars. That was
without
drugs (although it may have been influenced by previous drug experiences of mine). But with drugs, I typically didn’t listen to music, I would sit outside and look at landscapes, or get on a motorbike and go for rides. On those occasions I’d listen to music, I would be sensuously enchanted but often miss the structure of the music.”
without
drugs (although it may have been influenced by previous drug experiences of mine). But with drugs, I typically didn’t listen to music, I would sit outside and look at landscapes, or get on a motorbike and go for rides. On those occasions I’d listen to music, I would be sensuously enchanted but often miss the structure of the music.”
Oliver described a particular day at a friend’s home when the friend was out and music was involved. “I had ingested mescaline and probably some cannabis,” he began. “While waiting for the effects to take hold, I put on a phonograph in the living room of the apartment. I was enjoying the music enormously when I became aware of the first hint of the effects of the drugs, a slightly bitter taste in my mouth.” Oliver speaks with a British accent, and his voice has the lilting musical quality of a great storyteller. “Suddenly the music was coming from everywhere, not just the speakers, and it drowned out all my other thoughts. I felt at one with a four-hundred-year chain of music leading back to Monteverdi. I saw the most wonderful colors, and my thoughts were freed from their normal patterns. I saw colors I had never seen before, and I felt a great sense of peace. The world appeared to me to be older, more organized than I had previously considered it, and although I am an avowed atheist, I had a strong feeling of a benevolent presence—you might call it ‘Einstein’s God.’ ”
Not long after telling me this story, Oliver came to Montreal, where I live, to give a talk to a sold-out audience of eight hundred people in the same lecture hall where I give my cognitive psychology class every winter. He spoke about three of the twenty-nine chapters in his insightful book
Musicophilia,
tales of individuals with various brain disorders that affected their musical experience. The next morning I met him and his executive assistant and editor Kate Edgar at their hotel for a large buffet breakfast. Buffets with Oliver are . . . an
experience.
He takes small portions back to his seat, eats them, and then hurriedly darts back to the buffet with the bearing of a hunter, eyes squinted, hunched over, looking for some hidden treasure. He is usually rewarded for these efforts, bringing back on this day morsels of herring, banana nut bread, or granola that had eluded Kate and me.
Musicophilia,
tales of individuals with various brain disorders that affected their musical experience. The next morning I met him and his executive assistant and editor Kate Edgar at their hotel for a large buffet breakfast. Buffets with Oliver are . . . an
experience.
He takes small portions back to his seat, eats them, and then hurriedly darts back to the buffet with the bearing of a hunter, eyes squinted, hunched over, looking for some hidden treasure. He is usually rewarded for these efforts, bringing back on this day morsels of herring, banana nut bread, or granola that had eluded Kate and me.
We were talking about musical hallucinations, when Oliver jumped up. He returned a few minutes later with a star fruit. Oliver takes nothing in life for granted, finding pleasure in myriad little moments of the day. He cut the star fruit perfectly in half with a brain surgeon’s precision, and carefully—admiringly—studied the stellate pattern inside. He then ate the fruit, core and all, while I told him about my own musical hallucinations, which usually occur just as I’m falling asleep (the technical term for these is hypnagogic). Oliver, the rebel drug taker, was particularly interested in a
New York Times
op-ed piece I had recently written, explaining the neurogenetic and neuroanatomical connections between music and movement. The article ended with a tongue-in-cheek call for Lincoln Center to rip out the seats so that people could do what we were programmed to do by evolution: dance to the music. Oliver rocked back and forth in his seat as we discussed the article. “Are you hearing music in your head right now?” I asked him. “I’m almost
always
hearing music in my head!” he answered.
New York Times
op-ed piece I had recently written, explaining the neurogenetic and neuroanatomical connections between music and movement. The article ended with a tongue-in-cheek call for Lincoln Center to rip out the seats so that people could do what we were programmed to do by evolution: dance to the music. Oliver rocked back and forth in his seat as we discussed the article. “Are you hearing music in your head right now?” I asked him. “I’m almost
always
hearing music in my head!” he answered.
Our breakfast was in the restaurant of the hotel they were staying in, the Fairmont Queen Elizabeth. Oliver mentioned, amusedly, that he had been assigned the John Lennon suite, although he had no knowledge of the history behind that room—that John had stayed there in 1969 as part of a very well-publicized war protest. I remember watching the coverage of Lennon’s residency at the Queen Elizabeth from my home in California. I’d lived in Montreal for eight years but never known that the room had been preserved, much less named for Lennon. After breakfast, Oliver—knowing me to be a Lennon fan—asked if I wanted to see the room, so we went up to Room 1742. As soon as we got out of the elevator, I froze in my steps. I recognized the hallway in front of 1742, the same hallway I had seen on
The Huntley-Brinkley Report
on the nightly NBC news.
The Huntley-Brinkley Report
on the nightly NBC news.
Kate and I—who are about the same age—kept interrupting each other explaining to Oliver why the room was named the “John Lennon/Yoko Ono Suite.” That during the last week of May 1969, Lennon and his wife had staged an event to protest the Vietnam War. Lennon recognized that his celebrity caused reporters to follow his every move, and he wanted to use that for a higher purpose than simply gathering more publicity for himself. He and Yoko came up with the idea of a “bed-in,” the honeymoon equivalent of a “sit-in.” They would stay in bed for a week and talk to reporters about the war, about peace, and try to use that as a platform for their views. Many reporters mocked them. Some were disappointed, expecting to find the couple making love for the cameras. The couple swallowed their formidable impatience, and played host to a continuous stream of journalists, some prepared to cover a serious story, many more not.
Oliver opened the door and invited us in. My vision of the room took on a kind of split-screen quality, present reality mingled with vivid competing visions of the news reports from forty years ago. Huntley-Brinkley. Cronkite. Peter Jennings. On June 1, 1969, Lennon wrote and recorded “Give Peace a Chance” in this room with Timothy Leary, Tommy Smothers, and others singing backgrounds. The room looks just like it did then, except the mattress has been replaced. The walls have pictures of John and Yoko in that very room during the bed-in. One of the photos, just next to the bed, is in full color, showing John’s auburn hair and bushy eyebrows, and the small mole between his eyes, what Yoko describes as one of three moles he had, seldom caught in photographs, this one giving him a Buddha-like third eye. He’s cradling his Gibson J-160—I’ve never seen a photograph of John “holding” a guitar, he always is cradling it as one would a child—and he’s drawn caricatures of himself and Yoko on the front with a Sharpie. The color photo is flanked by two black-and-white photos of the couple in bed, talking to reporters. Timothy Leary is in the foreground of one, Tommy Smothers in the other.
Oliver stood in a large sitting room off the bedroom, studying the framed manuscript of “Give Peace a Chance” and a gold record award for five million sales. More photographs of John and Yoko graced the walls in the room, along with a pair of Zen paintings and a still-life bowl of fruit. “I don’t know much about popular culture after about 1960,” Oliver said, his remark reminiscent in accent and tone of Seth McFarlane’s Stewie Griffin. But Kate and I grew up in all of this, and back then had felt that we could change the world just by wanting it to be so.
The two of us are in the bedroom, transfixed by the photographs.
I’m standing right next to the bed where John and Yoko launched this protest, where they sang the song.
I hear it playing in my head. It is anthemic, large, earnest, pleading and yearning for peace, for people to lay down their weapons. The song is recursive in that it refers to itself and to the media frenzy surrounding its recording. The verse is a poke at the reporters who were preoccupied with trying to come up with the right label for the event, with trying to characterize it, while patronizingly ignoring the message
behind
the song.
I’m standing right next to the bed where John and Yoko launched this protest, where they sang the song.
I hear it playing in my head. It is anthemic, large, earnest, pleading and yearning for peace, for people to lay down their weapons. The song is recursive in that it refers to itself and to the media frenzy surrounding its recording. The verse is a poke at the reporters who were preoccupied with trying to come up with the right label for the event, with trying to characterize it, while patronizingly ignoring the message
behind
the song.
The words of the refrain, their vernacular quality, sum up the message: All we are saying is “give peace a chance.” We’ve tried everything else—bombing, shooting, napalm, hand-to-hand, air strikes, strafing. Why don’t we try
not fighting
for a while and see if that works any better? The message is so simple, from a heart that had managed to keep a sense of childlike wonder about the world even at the age of twenty-eight. He would only live another eleven years.
not fighting
for a while and see if that works any better? The message is so simple, from a heart that had managed to keep a sense of childlike wonder about the world even at the age of twenty-eight. He would only live another eleven years.
How can they talk about winning a war when so many people die? Who are the winners and what have they won—the right to have killed so many without repercussions?
I look at the photographs and then at the bed, then at the photographs, and at the radiator, trying to match up the elements of the pictures with the room I’m standing in. I walk to the window and look out—this is what John saw when he was here—the city skyline, the cars below, the buildings across the street. This room was where he wrote the song. As I move from the photographs to the room, studying them, I notice Kate start to tear up.
“I remember where I was when I first heard that song,” she says.
“It was full of so much hope,” I add. “Lennon believed he could change the world with a song—with that song—he believed that much in the power of music.” The song continues to play in my head, but not like an ear worm, stuck in an irritating twenty-second loop, but full, rich, vivid. I hear the percussiveness of his guitar (hastily miked, it sounds thin, more like sandpaper and sticks than the beautiful spectral instrument it is), the clapping of the twenty people in the room, the makeshift bass drum of people clomping their feet on the floor, sounding eerily like mortar fire.
My mind becomes flooded with thoughts I haven’t held there in years—the death of my grandfather, of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy, the dead war veterans, the Kent State students, Lennon’s own violent death. Standing in Room 1742, Lennon’s room, I find a tear for all their lives, and all that they stood for.
CHAPTER 3
Joy or “Sometimes You Feel Like a Nut”
A
t one time or another, all of us are filled with a sense of giddy, unrestrainable
joy.
It could be the first sunny day after a long winter; the first glimpse of a recovering loved one we had thought near death; a three-year-old finding the teddy bear that had been missing for months underneath the bed. It can come for no reason at all, just waking up in the morning and feeling good. It can be the result of random chemical perturbations in the brain or external changes in fortune. It is a natural occurrence, an almost unconscious drive to celebrate. In Chapter 1, I mentioned poems and songs celebrating life’s little moments—the joy of biting into a garden-fresh tomato, of seeing your newborn take her first steps, of learning for the first time that that special someone loves you back. The natural reaction is to sing, jump, dance, shout—all things that are part of standard music-dance in all societies. Formulating these feelings into a coherent structure makes them into
a
song or
a
dance, but even without such form, they
are
music-dance.
t one time or another, all of us are filled with a sense of giddy, unrestrainable
joy.
It could be the first sunny day after a long winter; the first glimpse of a recovering loved one we had thought near death; a three-year-old finding the teddy bear that had been missing for months underneath the bed. It can come for no reason at all, just waking up in the morning and feeling good. It can be the result of random chemical perturbations in the brain or external changes in fortune. It is a natural occurrence, an almost unconscious drive to celebrate. In Chapter 1, I mentioned poems and songs celebrating life’s little moments—the joy of biting into a garden-fresh tomato, of seeing your newborn take her first steps, of learning for the first time that that special someone loves you back. The natural reaction is to sing, jump, dance, shout—all things that are part of standard music-dance in all societies. Formulating these feelings into a coherent structure makes them into
a
song or
a
dance, but even without such form, they
are
music-dance.
Two great contemporary songwriters, Sting and Rodney Crowell, both feel that the very first songs humans sang must have been songs to express joy.
Sting dropped by to visit my laboratory when his band the Police were on tour in the summer of 2007. I told him about
The World in Six Songs
and he said that he’d like to trade ideas about the origins of music. We met up again that fall in Barcelona, where the Police world tour was continuing.
The World in Six Songs
and he said that he’d like to trade ideas about the origins of music. We met up again that fall in Barcelona, where the Police world tour was continuing.
“I think the first song was just abstract fun with sound. You know, opening your mouth and going ‘Aaaaa Ooooo Aaaaa Eeeee Aye!’ And once you’ve developed
that
as a sense of play, or a sense of opening the trachea and breathing—putting stuff out in the atmosphere—then songs come from there. But they’re essentially
fun;
it’s
fun
to make those sounds. I’ve noticed that when I sing in concerts, just playing with vowels, there’s a shamanic element to sound. Magical—creating a mood of a numinous feeling of connection to everything.”
that
as a sense of play, or a sense of opening the trachea and breathing—putting stuff out in the atmosphere—then songs come from there. But they’re essentially
fun;
it’s
fun
to make those sounds. I’ve noticed that when I sing in concerts, just playing with vowels, there’s a shamanic element to sound. Magical—creating a mood of a numinous feeling of connection to everything.”
Other books
The Man in the Moss by Phil Rickman
The Portuguese Escape by Ann Bridge
SEAL's Baby (Navy SEAL Secret Baby Romance) by Naomi Niles
El guardián de los niños by Johan Theorin
The Petrified Ants by Kurt Vonnegut
Frognapped by Angie Sage
The Big Crunch by Pete Hautman
Star Force: Quenar (SF88) (Star Force Origin Series) by Aer-Ki Jyr
The Perfect Poison by Amanda Quick
By Some Miracle I Made It Out of There: A Memoir by Tom Sizemore
