I’ve been thinking a lot about music, the brain, and memories. I know: an odd thing to simply wake up one day and start pondering. Hear me out. You may have had the satisfaction of watching the 20/20 piece on Gabby Giffords recently, where in it showed her therapist using music to help her get her abilities back? It was a touching piece, and there were several amazing scenes with Gabby in a hospital or treatment facility surrounded by musicians. Why musicians? Well, this is because the brain responds very powerfully to music. Furthermore, not all music related functions, like language related functions, are stored in one specific place. When brain trauma occurs, and one part is damaged, music lets the brain access other parts of the brain, and other emotions, skills, and memories stored there. It’s really quite astounding.
Another reason I think about music and the brain more than the average Joe is my wife is a music therapist, and she works with people in similar situations to Gabby Giffords everyday. Hence, due to marital contract, I must at least be familiar with this stuff or conversations around the dinner table can get really boring, really fast.
Honestly, I never really thought about the role the music plays in memories or emotional recall until I met my wife. Since, I’ve realized that music embeds itself into your mind in ways that are semi miraculous, as Gabby is discovering, I’m sure.
For example, yesterday I listened to a song called Sucker Punch by the band Five Iron Frenzy. They’re an old school Christian Ska band, and when I was in my uber zealous Christian crusader days, I kept their CD spinning constantly. I really related to them before I went off to college and ran head first into peer pressure, parties, and body shaving—all that was considered grown up at the time. Ska’s time was too short, and the rumor was girls liked guys who were into Nickel Back, or Creed.
I pulled Five Iron up on YouTube today, after nearly a decade of not listening to them. I could remember every single lyric, as if I’d sang it with the band every Sunday at church.
But that’s not all that came back to me. The memories that surrounded the song, the emotions the song gave me, the experiences shared with the song as the soundtrack—all of that came back as well.
Let’s go down memory lane for a spell. When I got a hold of that CD I was about to turn 17. I was playing for this American Legion Baseball team in my hometown area of Canton. We played on the Perry high school field, close to my grandmother’s house on the south side of the city.
I was a bit of a clown back then. Like all the other kids on the team, I had an Easton brand bat bag with clips on the end of it so you could hang it form the chain link fencing of the amateur dugouts you played in. However, unlike the other kids, my bat-bag had more then just bats and baseball equipment. It had, if memory serves, a whiffle ball bat, a samurai sword (plastic), a hockey stick, and a golf club. That was just in the bat compartment. In the glove compartment I had nun chucks (of course I had nun chucks) a super soaker, and—I’m not kidding—a stuffed Gund brand platypus named Zolar.
If you think that’s funny, you should see the crap I kept in the trunk of my rusted out Relient K—also the name of a Christian Band.
Anyway, since I never did anything else but pitch, I ‘d have some or all of this stuff out during games and practices. I’d warm up in the batters box with the samurai sword just to make the tiny amount of fans that showed up to the games laugh.
Other players would take my nun chucks and beat on each other. The Super Soaker always found someone to spray. But, the one thing that was always out was Zolar.
Zolar was like my animal good luck charm, a theme that has continued in my life even to this day. I mean, anyone can have a rally monkey or a rain turtle, but how many people can have a good luck platypus? Or a mighty Garfoose?
Since I was a pitcher with too much downtime, during home games I got to use the Perry high school PA system to announce our batters and play music for them as they came up to the plate. I would dramatically stretch their names and roll their R’s (if they had any), and otherwise embarrass myself. Except, back then, it didn’t feel embarrassing. It was cool, it was liberating; it was kids playing a game.
And one of those kids (me) was really, really on fire for Jesus in the most commercialized way he could be. I had the shirts, the wrist bands, and the music—which I replaced many of other players chosen walk-up songs with so I could—my rational at the time—use it to reach those in hearing range for Jesus.
Well, players are always touchy about their walk-up songs. Chalk this up to the power music has over the brain, I guess. So it should come as no surprise that a few of the guys who had stronger mental ties to their music got a little pissed at me for turning Welcome To The jungle into Love Song For a Savior by Jars Of Clay.
One of them got so mad that He threatened illl upon me should I miss-DJ his music again. I did not tell him this, but in my head I translated his threat of “ill” into “shouldering the burden of the cross” and “treasures in heaven.” Surly this player was not mad at me for changing his music, he was mad at Jesus for using me to spread his glory! Naturally, I had to replace his song now, it was a matter of faith! The song I used, you guessed it, Sucker Punch by Five Iron Frenzy.
I started the next day’s game with Zolar at his standard perch in my equipment cubby. After about three innings, I came in and discovered that Zolar had been violently attacked. He’d been torn into two pieces by some unknown aggressor. Even with a Samurai swords, nunchucks, and Jesus to protect him, Zolar was no match.
A part of me died inside as I stood there, holding his broken body in my hand. “Why God,” I screamed out “why have you forsaken him?”
I never miss-DJed a song again. I did, however, buy another platypus. Praise the Lord.