stories

I Have a Superpower

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To be fair, I think a lot of other people have this superpower as well. And I think I’ve known about it, vaguely, for quite some time, but I don’t think it’s been this clear until today.

I have the power to take on a character’s feelings when I read a book and sometimes when I watch a TV show. So if a character’s heart has been hardened by trials & tribulations and is filled with anger, I am pissed. If a woman is furious with her thieving, cheating husband, I am angry with my husband (sorry, honey). And if a character has lost a loved one and is desperately sad, so am I. But it’s not all ‘bad’ feelings I get from these fictional characters. Good feelings pass along too. I just finished reading a romance novel and as I read it over the past few days, I was walking on air and feeling blissfully content, as if I had just fallen in love for the first time too. And if I watch a New Girl or Parks and Rec episode, I am imbued with the indomitable optimism of Jessica Day or Leslie Knope.

This power is partially what Jonathan Gottschall was talking about in The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human (which I’ve mentioned before – it’s a good book, you should read it). Stories are extremely powerful for all humans. Combine that with my empathic nature and BOOM – you have a woman who has to choose very carefully what she reads and watches. As they say, you are what you eat and we eat with our eyes first.

With all the heaviness that has been overwhelming in reality lately, I’m choosing to feel blissfully content when I can and read me some romance novels. 😉

Why Good Music Videos are Important

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I was making a playlist of favorite songs and I realized that a lot of them happened to come from movies. I think this is because the story of the movie imbues the song with even more power. It cements it in my mind as a powerful emotional piece.

Later in the week, my sister was telling me about Ariana Grande’s new songs and she kept saying, “The music video is so good too” and telling me I needed to watch it. The thing is, I’ve never really been into music videos. Many of them add nothing to the music listening experience and some even detract from it. But then I realized that good music videos do the same thing as movies – they cement the story of the song in my mind. And in fact, this had happened to me before. 

Katy Perry’s song, “Wide Awake”, had been playing on the radio for a while. I liked the song well enough but had no deep, emotional connection to it. One day I was on YouTube and stumbled across the music video for “Wide Awake” and I was blown away. As I watched the video, the story that I was seeing played out before my eyes was helping me see the song in an entirely new way and I was able to connect to that song on a new level. In addition, every time I hear that song, I’m reminded of the video and the deep emotional connection just as I am when I hear a favorite song from a movie. The song on it’s own was not very powerful. But when I was shown the meaning behind it, through the visuals of the music video, it became very powerful for me. 

I suspect this ties into the power that stories have over us humans. As Jonathan Gottschall says in The Storytelling Animal (an excellent book that you should read):

“When we read nonfiction, we read with our shields up. We are critical and skeptical. But when we are absorbed in a story, we drop our intellectual guard. We are moved emotionally, and this seems to leave us defenseless.” 

And Oliver Sacks speaks about the power of music in
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain:

“Music, uniquely among the arts, is both completely abstract and profoundly emotional. . . . Music can pierce the heart directly; it needs no mediation.”

So a music video, a good one anyways, is taking the emotional power of stories and the emotional power of music and combining them in a profound way. Wow. I hadn’t given much thought to making music videos to accompany my music album when it’s done, but I definitely will now. 

Watercolor. © 2018. Angelle Conant. All Rights Reserved.

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