Greg Proffit Writing

Tag: music

  • Listening To The Grateful Dead Will Teach You Everything You Need To Know — But You Must Also Dance

    Listening To The Grateful Dead Will Teach You Everything You Need To Know — But You Must Also Dance

    Photo by Jay Blakesberg

    # 99 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: You can learn everything you need to know in life from listening to the Grateful Dead — but you must also dance.

    The Godfather is the i-Ching, I beg to differ

    My tip is a derivative of this Godfather scene in You’ve Got Mail, the 1998 rom-com starring Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan. In the classic scene, Hanks answers Ryans questions with references to the Godfather, assuring her it is the “answer to every question,” the “i-Ching,” and “the sum of all wisdom.” It is a brilliant scene Hanks pulls off with aplomb, throwing in some impromptu Brando imitations for emphasis.

    I love the scene, but beg to differ. My go-to source is the Grateful Dead. Within their musical catalogue is everything you need to know. Non DeadHeads don’t understand (and don’t want to know) how their music infiltrates, penetrates, and saturates a Dead fan’s mindset to the last brain cell. 

    “For the truly Deadicated, theMusic Never Stops” 

    My someday book

    I plan to write a book in which every chapter will be a life-topic with related song titles — like this sampler:

    • Love — They Love Each Other, Sugar Magnolia, Not Fade Away, Comes A Time
    • God — Hell in A Bucket, Lay Down My Brother, Wharf Rat
    • Family — Me & My Uncle, Brother Esau, Mama Tried
    • Relationships — Row Jimmy, He’s Gone, Cold Rain & Snow
    • Politics — Throwing Stones, Standing On The Moon
    • Philosophy — Terrapin Station, St. Stephen, Eyes of the World, Box of Rain
    • Justice — Dupree’s Diamond Blues, Stagger Lee, Viola Lee Blues
    • Economics — Deal, Loser, Easy Wind, Big Boss Man
    • Psychology— China Cat Sunflower, Brown-Eyed Women, The Other One
    • Death— Death Don’t Have No Mercy, To Lay Me Down, Brokedown Palace, Black Peter

    This partial, non-exhaustive listing is exemplary of how songs in their extensive repertoire have application to every aspect of life. Like I said above, you can learn everything you need to know from listening to the Grateful Dead.

    Discovering all these connections made the music the soundtrack of my life; and one of my favorite lyrics serves up advice for all life’s uncertainties:

    “If you get confused, listen to the music play”

    ~Grateful Dead: Franklin’s Tower

    One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest

    As a young adult, I got lost for several years in the hippy lifestyle (including the drug use part). I travelled cross-country following the band from show to show. The community was like none I’ve experienced since. The traveling kaleidoscope of clowns was family — a home on the road. 

    On my journey in 1985, I met Ken Kesey, author of One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, himself instrumental in the hey-day of what is known as the 60’s movement, and equally pivotal in the Dead’s beginnings as the house band for the infamous San Francisco Acid Tests so marvelously chronicled in Tom Wolfe’s seminal volume, The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test. 

    I went to dozens and dozens of shows became more and more lost in the mysticism and mythology and mis-application of truths and nearly lost my physical and mental health in the melee. 

    A year later, I met someone even more famous than Kesey. At a show in March of 1986, I met Jesus. My life forever changed, though the music has remained the soundtrack of it. The accoutrements of drugs and touring, I left behind. They aren’t necessary. They really never were. The music itself is a healing gift. One I’m Grateful to God to still enjoy. 

    Dance as if your life depends on it

    So many Grateful Dead songs are about impending mortality. The idea is in their very name. A fellow writer on Medium wrote this beautiful essay Accepting Your Mortality is the Beginning of Living Well. I heartily concur. The Grateful Dead’s music helps remind me. And it reminds me that the only effective antidote against an encroaching death is to live, to sing, and by God, to dance.

    Is there anything more celebratory, more filled with life and joy, the kind of life-celebration powerful enough to mock death — than dancing in the face of it?

    I think often of the story in the Old Testamanet, when the Ark of The Covenant was restored to Israel and Jerusalem after spending months and years outside the city, a young King David danced in such ecstatic jubilation, he danced right out of his clothes. 

    I still dance that way — celebrating life — warding off death. Now, I spin and whirl and shake my bones in the privacy of my home. Almighty God is the recipient of my Gratitude as He watches the overflow of my pent-up life. Nothing expresses exultation for the joy of living the way dancing does. As I dance before my God, the band playing is “Jehovah’s favorite choir“, the Grateful Dead.

    Everything you need to know—Just remember to dance

    So yes, I’m quite convinced, you can learn everything you need to know in life from listening to the Grateful Dead… but you must also dance.

    “Sometimes the songs that we hear are just songs of our own.”

    ~ Grateful Dead: Eyes Of The World

  • How Music Affects Your Emotions Directly

    Photo by Jens Thekkeveettil on Unsplash

    # 23 on my 99 Life Tips–A List is: Music bypasses your thoughts to affect your emotions directly. It is unique among art forms for this quality as far as I’ve discovered. Take care then, what you are inviting to stir your emotions.

    Music affects emotions and brain responses in emotional centers regardless of lyrical content, or whether the pieces are solely instrumental. There is a body of brain imaging and clinical proof that music bypasses your thoughts to affect your emotions directly.

    This topic is worthy of a book or a doctoral thesis on its own. I will limit my commentary to calling your attention to the facts stated. Of note is that one study linked above showed that hearing sad music provoked some people to deeper levels of sadness.

    “… the study found that for some people, sad music can cause negative feelings of profound grief.”

     ~ Memorable Experiences with Sad Music—Reasons, Reactions and Mechanisms of Three Types of Experiences published in Plos One

    Emotions usually spring from thoughts

    Emotions usually arise as the products of thoughts, and independent of willing them into existence. A person can choose to be happy, but cannot by willing it, make it so directly. One cannot will happiness. One must first think happy thoughts… or listen to happy music. Music affects your emotions directly, not needing the mind to act as conduit.

    I am listening to jazz by Art Pepper as I write this. This is the first time I’ve immersed myself in an hour of his playing. I am familiar with him as a jazz musician only because I’ve read references to him in some Barry Eisler books, and I’ve heard snippets of tunes while watching the Bosch detective series derived from Michael Connelly’s novels. (You can stream Bosch on Amazon Prime Video).

    Having no familiarity with Pepper’s music, I am enjoying his fluid, sensual, upbeat, even cheerful jazz clarinet and saxophone as the perfect accompaniment to writing. There is nothing melancholy or depressing about it. It is urgent and energetic—sometimes staccato, phrased like well punctuated sentences. He plays woodwinds the way a hummingbird flies, darting here and there—never still for long. There is nothing angry, and certainly no rage. I find myself carried along, fully engaged with the virtuosity of expression, the coolness of style that draws me in like a whisper rather than repelling me like a shout.

    Ray Bradbury said the best jazz musicians play as if they don’t believe in death. An hour or so in and I know Pepper is an unbeliever, too. Listening to him I don’t believe in death, either. Rather, I feel smarter, more sophisticated and cosmopolitan—more vibrant and alive. It would be the perfect soundtrack for a dinner party, or an art crawl. Perhaps to serenade a gathering of happy, comfortable friends as they sample wines, cheeses, and chocolates. I like it. It makes me feel good and I will add Pepper’s jazz to my rotation.

    You have your favorite music. Ask yourself what it does for you. How does it make you feel? Do you have a “go to” band or song?

    Music as mental health medicine

    I have a life-rule not included on my 99 Life Tips list, but it would easily be the hundredth tip. Never, ever drink when you’re down. That, too, is a story in its own right. You should, however, have some healthy alternatives for self-medicating your mental health. I find there is nothing better than music. The studies linked above cite the therapeutic value of music as well. Music affects your emotions. Just take care to recognize which emotions you’re inviting yourself to feel when you make your choice of music to listen to.

    “Dear Mr. Fantasy, play us a tune

    Something to make us all happy

    Do anything, take us out of this gloom

    Sing a song, play guitar, make it snappy

    You are the one who can make us all laugh

    But doing that you break out in tears

    Please don’t be sad, if it was a straight mind you had,

    We wouldn’t have known you all these years”

    ~Traffic: Dear Mr. Fantasy

  • “Iko Iko” with Dr. John, Bill, and Mickey

    This is the YouTube video Playing for Change, Song Around the World version of “Iko Iko”. It features Dr. John in one of his last recorded pieces before he passed. Also, Bill Kreutzman and Mickey Hart make appearances in the video.

    I love these. This one made me cry. You know it’s art when it moves you like that. “Hey Now!”

  • MTV…not so much!

    Carlos Santana and Rob Thomas from the official music video for Smooth

    As a quick follow-up to yesterday’s post on hot and cool media, I thought I’d share some of my opinions about music.

    I belong firmly in the camp of people who believe that MTV ruined music.

    Here’s why.

    Music is about sound and hearing and what happens in the brain when that’s going on. Studies show that music taps the brain’s pleasure centers in a unique way, even triggering the release of dopamine for the anticipation of where the notes are heading. And it has long been surmised that there is a correlation between music and memory in a way that is similar to the sense of smell and its association with memories.

    Video is also about sound, but it is a much ”hotter” medium in McLuhan’s terms. Because of the visual component, any imagination or personal connection that a particular song might evoke, is obliterated once the song is married to a video. The video becomes the vehicle for how the song is perceived, rather than your own emotional and mental state. The video replaces your imagination. This is a bum deal in my opinion.

    I can’t hear Peaceful, Easy Feeling by the Eagles, or Lido Shuffle by Boz Scaggs without being transported to my thirteenth summer. Thank God there was no video, or I’d never be able to associate those songs with Long Beach and the sweet-ache of innocent summer love I had for Ruth Ellen H, and a bus trip to Atlanta to spend a week with my cousin, Rob, and the sultry and out-of-my-league Heidi H…but I hear the first notes of that pedal steel guitar, imagine just how the ”sparkling earrings lay against your skin so brown”, and I’m right back there.

    I love the Santana song, Smooth. It is fantastic, has a great lyric, and what’s not to like about Carlos’ guitar, anyway?  But when I hear it, I see the video with Rob Thomas singing, and the sweaty chick in the window, and the Latinas dancing in the streets of Spanish Harlem. I love the tune, but because of the video, I have zero personal connection to it.

    When it comes to music: 

    ”Give me your heart, make it real, or let’s forget about it.”

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