Heroes Not Zombies

The music in my heart I bore, 
Long after it was heard no more. 

These are the last two lines in Wordsworth’s Solitary Reaper. (I’ve developed a habit which I recommend – reading a poem every day. Poetry activates the right cerebral hemisphere, the half of the brain which has been neglected, and so left underdeveloped, in our very materialistic, mechanistic and utilitarian societies. I reckon it’s a better idea to have both halves of our brain equally well developed so I’m practicing the common activities which stimulate and activate the rather neglected right hemisphere – poetry, music, relationships and wonder).

Music has the power to touch us, to move us, to reach right into the depths of the soul. How many of your memories have a piece of music attached? So much so that just a few bars of a particular song or tune opens the floodgates to images, and, more importantly, intense feelings which a specific memory evokes?

When those notes begin to play we don’t just remember in the way we’d remember a fact, we remember by re-living the event, feeling again exactly whatever it was we felt before.

It works both ways, doesn’t it? A particular song can evoke particular memories, but so also can particular memories evoke specific phrases of music.

So it’s true that the music lingers in our hearts long after the song is over.

What music is lingering in your heart?