Since I was a kid, certain songs or pieces of music have come along that have a profound emotional effect on me – out of all proportion, in theory, to anything that sounds should be able to evoke in a human being.

As far back as I can remember, A Night on Bald Mountain, The Danse Macabre and Tchaikovsky’s “Arabian Dance” from “The Nutcracker” have stirred me at my core; “Arabian Dance” in particular has given me goosebumps for as long as I can remember. Even today.

Other songs have come along since I was a kid and I’ve built mix tapes, then mix CDs, and now MP3-based playlists – songs that share a common emotional response for me personally, and have nothing else in common. I’ve been listening to some mixes I made 10+ years ago, and they have been having just as powerful an effect on me as they did when I put them together.

What I have to question is: Why? How can a certain collection of sounds and notes have such an electric effect on a person? How can a song I’ve never heard before, and have no conscious frame of reference for, practically move me to tears?

More to the point, how can a song I’ve never heard remind me of, or make me think about times and places I’ve never been? *

I won’t call myself a skeptic; skeptics refuse to believe something unless you can prove it. I’m not that demanding. I’m not sure how to qualify my experience of the world – I don’t perceive the supernatural, for sure. I’ve never seen anything remotely out of the ordinary. But that doesn’t make me disbelieve in the things I don’t/can’t see – I’ve never seen a million dollars. Perfectly reasonable people see ghosts every day, for instance – who am I to say they’re wrong?

Point being, whereas I don’t seem to be wired to see supernatural/preternatural things, I am, on the other hand, pretty damned logical. And logic dictates that, if a piece of music can completely alter the fabric of my being on every conscious level, there must be something more at work, here, than just sounds hitting the eardrums.

For one thing, I think it lends credence to the idea of reincarnation – past lives. If, as eternal souls, we absorb certain base-level ideas and experiences, surely a core understanding and preference in music would be included. It would explain why only a certain type of music can provoke such a dynamic response.

Food for thought.

* I swear I’ve heard music in the past that has instantly (mentally) taken me to times and places other than my own. I can’t account for it.

ADDENDUM: Here’s a perfect example. In the mid-90′s I saw a movie on the Sci Fi Channel called “Sleepstalker”. It wasn’t terrible, but it wasn’t great. However, there were flashbacks to the killer’s origin involving an old 1950′s 45 record player playing a lullaby that absolutely chilled me to the bone, to the point that I haven’ t forgotten it in over 10 years. A quick web search has turned up a snippet of it – if you can listen to this and not get goosebumps, you’re made of colder stuff than me: http://perseverancerecords.com/manzie2.3.mp3