There are a few things you don’t know about me. Ok, there are a lot of things you don’t know about me, LOL, but last week I had the most fun realization while browsing instagram and finding the Evanescence Fallen 20th anniversary filter.
Fallen was released back in 2003, but I think it was 2005/2006 when I found out about it. Let’s be real, back then the internet was pretty new and not that accessible as it is now.
It quickly became my entire personality, as for many others, I believe.
I realize now how attached I was to that music, I consumed all of it, videos, live performances and so on. I gave my mother a document with the lyrics so she can print those at work and I listened the music on and on and I learned them (I still know them, hehe).
I glued some plastic bits to my eyebrow so it would look like I had a piercing like Amy had. Dressing like her was harder as I didn’t had the money to go and buy those, but over time I kept that style. Nowadays my style has become corporate vampire or cozy grandma.
Two things only I still want: the blue eyes and the ability to play the piano. The eyes I can change through a filter on instagram or edit my pictures or even get contact lenses, however the piano thing is much harder. I actually fell in love with the piano because of Amy. I would love to be able to play and I think I will eventually buy one keyboard and start at it, been thinking a lot about that one. I actually found this virtual piano website and guess what, it had My Immortal’s music sheet and the corresponding (computer) keys to press. I learnt that and a few others, like Moonlight Sonata. That’s how obsessed I was with the piano.
I used to download hundreds of pictures of Amy and the band, I used to do collage work and post on DeviantArt (I think that website is still on). I printed pictures and started drawing them, I had a collection of posters, my Yahoo!Messenger (RIP) avatar was Amy, of course.
Over years, I toned it down (THANK GOD), I discovered other kind of music, but to this day I remain a fan to this music. And since I love science and especially how the brain works, I looked this up, so let me back that up with some facts.
Researchers say that people tend to be especially fond of music from their adolescent years and recall music from a specific age period — 10 to 30 years with a peak at 14 — more easily.
Personality may influence our musical taste, but it’s important to note that changes in musical taste do not indicate a change in personality. Even if we change what we listen to, we implicitly remain the same people.
“An introvert may change over time … but ultimately their core [and] basis will be introversion,” Greenberg says.
“Fourteen is a sort of magic age for the development of musical tastes,” Daniel J. Levitin, a professor of psychology says – looking back now it makes sense and I invite you to sit back and reminisce of your youth.
” The music 14-year-olds listen to helps them define the boundaries of themselves and their friend groups. Scientists have actually drawn up quantitative measures that can anticipate an individual’s musical preferences based on their personality traits.”
“If you want to firm up your body, head to the gym. If you want to exercise your brain, listen to music.”
The specialists at Hopkins say that music is a vibration that gets into our ear canal and tickle the eardrum. This tickle is transmitted as an electrical signal which travels through “the auditory nerve to the brain stem where it is reassembled into something we perceive as music.”
Harvard says that music activates all parts of the brain, however those connections to the neurons can be lost if you don’t use them; the brain will then reassign that pathway to something else. Similar to how hard it is to speak in a foreign language you haven’t spoken into for a long time.
Music promotes well-being, enhances learning, stimulates cognitive function, improves quality of life and induces happiness – therefore don’t stop listening to it!
Sources:
https://www.washingtonpost.com/science/2022/09/25/music-taste-personality-traits/
https://www.mic.com/articles/96266/there-s-a-magic-age-when-you-find-your-musical-taste-according-to-science
https://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/health/wellness-and-prevention/keep-your-brain-young-with-music
https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/why-is-music-good-for-the-brain-2020100721062
Featured photo credit: Photo by Mohammad Metri on Unsplash
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