The power of familiar music

 It is early in the morning and I am up before dawn, as often happens. It is a detached house with only me in it at the moment, so there is no risk of waking anyone else up if I want to play music, which I do.

I  put on a familiar track, such as 'Shoot the Moon' by Norah Jones and listen while the kettle boils and I potter around. The song is beautiful but what makes it even more beautiful is that I am very familiar with it. I could sing it through to the end if I turned it off this moment. And it made me think 'How is it that things that are familiar to you seem to have a much deeper effect on your soul?'

This does not at all apply just to music, however. I noticed it during the day when I happened to be dipping into some poetry books. I read some ones that were completely new to me and ones with which I was familiar. The familiar ones had a much deeper effect, but I cannot confidently say that they were better poems than the ones with which I was unacquainted. There was definitely something about familiarity which linked to my enjoyment. I'd like to explore this.

I am very unacquainted with classical orchestral music but people who are very familiar with it have a really rapt and far-away look on their face when they come to a piece that they know well. Whether it is the slow bit in something by Mahler or the strident bit in something by Wagner, you can tell without asking that their familiarity with the piece is inextricably linked with their enjoyment.

I suppose one explanation is that you know where the song or music or poem is going next (like the bit about the rain on the tin roof in the song I was listening to) and anticipation (or anticiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiipation) is a pleasure in itself. The pleasure is being telegraphed because of the structure of the experience, so you know when you start that you are headed towards something that will give you great satisfaction, as it did the last time. 

But maybe it goes beyond that. There are lots of things with which we are very familiar but which don't give us this same rush to the head. I am very familiar with making my coffee or putting my socks on but I don't particularly look forward to the pleasure of those acts. The songs and music and poems are intended to be pleasurable, but that doesn't guarantee that they will be. What is happening in my brain when I get this extra boost of familiarity? One thing that occurs to me is that I am dragooning in all the previous enjoyment that I have had too. So each time I listen to a song I love, I am back in all the other times that I have enjoyed hearing it, a complete soundscape of bliss. And if it is one you can dance to, then I remember all the places and the moving and the people who were there with me. It could be that; the way in which familiarity and enjoyment multiply into all the previous encounters you've had with the thing that you are enjoying. 

Maybe there is something physiological going on too. I am not expert on brain waves, but I know that certain repeated activities, such as yoga, are very good at changing your brain patterns by their very familiarity. You can take yourself (or your 'self') out of the moment and be happily lost in the experience. Perhaps there is a certain meditative joy in familiarity.

I'd be very interested to know how much this is everyone else's experience too, in case I am just an outlier. Does familiarity bring you such great contènt too?