Musical Anhedonia

 

It takes years to realize you’re weird. As a kid, I liked music. I’d go upstairs, put headphones on, and listen to records. Mostly I enjoyed songs from movies or TV shows I liked. It wasn’t so much the music as the memories it evoked. I also enjoyed funny songs; Tom Lehrer was a favorite.

When our fifth grade class went to Peter and the Wolf, I couldn’t understand why the performance was so long. Okay, I get it, each animal is represented by a different instrument. Do we have to hear each one? Can we go back to school now?

As I aged, my weirdness became more noticeable. I couldn’t think when music was on. I couldn’t understand what people were saying. Homework was impossible. Concerts were agony. I may be the first person escorted out of San Francisco’s Symphony Hall for asking if they could “Wrap it up already.”

Not every concert bothered me. Janet Jackson had amazing costumes and a magical storybook like a TV that floated over the auditorium. Bobby McFerrin walked around the stage improvising with other musicians. But when I went to Hamilton and The Phantom of the Opera all I could think was “Are they just going to sing the whole time?”

When I tell people I don’t enjoy music, they say “You just haven’t found what you like.”

I know what I like. I like silence. I like conversation.

They say “Maybe you have a hearing problem.”

I don’t. I understand music. I even joined the choir in college and toured with them.

But I never “got” it. When I was feeling dramatic, I said music wasn’t “part of my soul.” Secretly, I thought everyone else was caught in a cultural delusion that music was good.

Now I avoid music when I can. My wife wears headphones when I’m around (an act of deep compassion). Our house is mostly silent. We haven’t danced once since our wedding.

One day, when my son was three, my wife put on Lady Gaga’s “Poker Face.” Out of the blue, he danced, jumping and moving with the music.

He was pretty good.

I was floored. I thought music was something you had to learn. You heard music, saw people dancing, and copied them. I was wrong. Music resonates inside people. It’s biological. Genetic.

Not with me. Music passes through me almost like I’m not there. It wasn’t the world; it was me.

A few days ago, trying to understand the AI Google shoved into Android Auto, it mentioned new term: musical anhedonia. Apparently, 3-10% of people have a neurological condition where they don’t get endorphins from listening to music.

I almost crashed into a streetlight.

“People get endorphins from listening to music?!”

Something clicked into place. I understood things that mystified me my whole life:

Dancing.

Working out to some songs, but not others.

The disgusted look a woman made as she went through my tapes in college.

A crowd swaying to a three-hour jazz performance while I tried not to run screaming from the building.

Personals ads listing what kinds of music someone likes.

People blaring music out open windows. People blaring music loud enough to cause damage to their ears.

The expression “Dance like no one’s watching.”

Songs with insipid, repetitive lyrics. Celine Dion’s “My Heart Will Go On,” The Police’s “Message in a Bottle,” Wicked’s “Defying Gravity.”

Rhythm games.

Posters a colleague put over his cubicle. The first showed a young woman in a chair; above her were the words NO MUSIC. In the second, she’d flopped forward like she’d been shot. Above her, NO LIFE.

Matt Damon in The Martian complaining all he had to listen to for years was disco (instead of just turning it off).

Dancing.

Okay, more on that. I always found dancing fascinating. Not the beauty of it but the variations and styles. I watched dancers wondering how many classes they’d taken, how many hours they studied. The idea people would just feel what to do never entered my mind.

As much as I despise what’s going on with AI, I thank it for teaching me that most people get endorphins from music. Now I understand.

You guys are all drug addicts.

When you’re sitting in the dark, swaying to music, you’re in an endorphin-fueled stupor. When you play something because you “can’t stand the silence,” you’re going into withdrawal.

Years ago, I walked into a nightclub with some friends and saw - through the dim strobes - a hundred people dancing like mad to music so loud it hurt. I never thought they were enjoying themselves. I assumed it was alcohol, peer pressure. Now I know it was their own brains.

It’s a relief to know I’m not strange or defective.

Y’all are just weird.