Wonder, Music and Creativity

It happened over a year ago, although I remember it as clearly as if it were just

last week. On a warm afternoon in August of 2005 I was relaxing at home listening to
music, to a song entitled, interestingly enough, “In the Presence Of”. The music
approached a particularly ecstatic passage as I anticipated the singer singing, “So if we
choose to realize, all existence is a dream”. The music built up to a joyous crescendo and
suddenly and without warning my awareness of time, space, and my body disappeared.
Instead, an amazing sense of joy and mystical insight overtook my awareness. For a
period of time which seemed extremely long, but in actually was no more than ten
seconds or so, I realized or was somehow given access to what I thought was a profound
insight into the ultimate nature of reality. I suddenly realized that everything is
interconnected in myriad ways, and I saw these connections as a mental image of a net
stretching out infinitely. As the wave of euphoria that accompanied this realization began
to subside and my normal awareness of external reality resumed I found myself in awe.

This was a wonder experience in the truest sense. I was in a state of wonder not
only because of the insight I had into reality but also because of the suddenness of the
experience. I stood up suddenly and turned the music off, and remained motionless as I
was overcome with sudden tears of joy. My first thought was to try to conceptualize my
experience in a way that made sense. Since I have an interest in Taoism and Buddhism, I
first thought that this experience was best explained by saying that I somehow realized or
directly experienced the Tao itself. However, the net of interconnectedness did not itself
contain any sort of essence or soul; the connections themselves determined its existence. I
then tried to conceptualize my experience in terms of the idea of dependant origination in
Buddhism, and found that it corresponded extremely closely, but somehow my
experience seemed to transcend even an almost identical written description.

I remained joyous for several hours following the experience, and spent much of
the time trying to understand what had happened. I had always thought those sorts of
experiences only happen to the devoutly religious or hallucinogenic drug users, of which
I am neither. I finally decided to take a walk around the neighborhood, and as I did I
somehow felt closer and more connected to everything I saw, birds, squirrels, even the
occasional passing car. Even as all traces of the experience disappeared, for days
afterwards I continued to feel a deep connection to everyone and everything. I have
always had a deep emotional response to music, and it is probably the primary reason
why I love to both listen to it and create it using musical instruments. Although my usual
response to music is nowhere near as powerful as what I just described, almost every day
that I’ve listened to music, for as long as I can remember, I am overcome with joy,
feelings of serenity, and various bodily sensations.

Strong emotional response to music is certainly not unique to me. Bulkeley

mentions that strong emotional responses to music, “often lead to transcendent states that
are explicitly likened to religious or spiritual revelation” (P. 122). Certain musical
structures consistently elicit specific emotions across various listeners (Bharucha, Curtis,
& Paroo). Some such emotional responses have been described as, “building up [to] an
almost insufferable tension” and on the opposite end of the emotional spectrum, “an
internal peace that words can't describe” (Rikki, 2004). Cognitive Neuroscience (CN) has
been exploring the biological substrates of emotional responses to music in an attempt to
understand why music can have such a powerful effect on listeners. Some of the findings
are surprising. For instance, one brain imaging study reported blood flow changes in
several brain regions when participants experienced “chills” while listening to music.
Some of these regions, such as the ventral striatum and orbitofrontal cortex, belong to the
limbic system, an evolutionarily older complex of brain region that is involved in reward
for seeking certain stimuli such as food and drugs of abuse (Peretz, 2006). The amygdala,
which is involved in the regulation of the fear-response, can also become activated in
response to music (Peretz, 2006).

Certain musical features also tend to give rise to an anticipatory response in

listeners that can result in weeping, joy, or chills (Bharucha, Curtis, & Paroo). My
experience that I detailed above can be explained in terms of an anticipatory response,
especially given that my last memories prior to the sudden shift in awareness involve my
anticipation of the next verse of the song. Research that suggests listeners are emotionally
aroused more by familiar music than unfamiliar music seems to support the notion of an
anticipatory response (Nikki, 2004).

In addition to enjoying music as a listener, I also play several musical instruments

including guitar and piano, as well as utilizing computers for music production and
editing. As Kelly Bulkeley point out, creativity seems to involve cognitive and neural
flexibility and novelty (Bulkeley, p. 104; Dierich, 2004). Unfortunately, Bulkeley does
not say what conditions give rise to creativity other than the possibility that “creativity
depends in large part on spontaneous stimulation of synaptic connections” (p. 104).
Several neuroanatomical models of creativity proposed by CN all take the prefrontal
cortex to be crucial to creativity. The prefrontal cortex is responsible for “executive
functions” such as planning, decision making, abstract thinking, rule acquisition, and the
initiation of appropriate actions and the inhibition of inappropriate actions (Dietrich,
2004).

The spontaneous nature of creativity is a particular source of frustration for me.

Often I will go for weeks or months without writing any new music, usually because I
don’t feel as if what I’ve come up with is novel and interesting enough to warrant
developing further. Yet on other occasions, in a spontaneous bout of manic creativity I
may write enough new music to fill a compact disc. It doesn’t surprise me that there
seems to be a link between mental illness and creativity (Bulkeley, p. 109), the creative
process itself demonstrates that well. Those times when I feel filled with an endless
source of creativity are wondrous occasions. I would not be exaggerating in the least if I
said that such moments makes me feel as if I am possessed by something or someone
else. In this regard I can certainly see why Bulkeley sees creativity as a “de-centering”
process like sexual desire, contemplative practices or dreams.

The powerful wonder experience I had has profoundly affected the music and
lyrics that I write. I find myself trying to write music that can somehow communicate my
experience to other people, perhaps in the hope that I can explain through music what
words fail to describe. It seems as if music has the ability to induce a feedback loop in
which music-induced wonder experiences lead to further creative efforts that then result
in the creation of novel musical ideas. Bulkeley’s discussion of the relationship between
music and religion around the world (p. 114-118) supports the idea of a feedback
mechanism. In the case of music and religion, music aides in accessing the divine, and
the divine wonder experiences will positively influence the music in a way that may
increase its chances of propelling the listeners into another wonder experience.

References

Bharucha, J. J., Curtis, M., & Paroo, K. (2006).Varieties of musical experience.

Cognition. 1, 131-172.

Bulkeley, K. (2005). The Wondering Brain. New York, NY: Routledge.

Dietrich, Arne (2004).The cognitive neuroscience of creativity. Psychonomic Bulletin &

Review. 11, 1011-1026.

Peretz, Isabelle (2006).The nature of music from a biological perspective. Cognition. 100,
1-32.

Rickard, Nikki S. (2004).Intense Emotional Responses to Music: A Test of the

Physiological Arousal Hypothesis. Psychology of Music. 32, 371-388.