The Chemicals in My Brain

Art has power. Words have power. Music has power. That’s because we’re essentially a mass of chemicals and ganglia wired to a big chunk of meat. Besides giving us the illusion of free will, this insanely complex glut of neurons makes us vulnerable to abstractions that have absolutely no physical or practical effect on our lives.

There’s this song in The Phantom of the Opera, a not-very-good musical with occasional moments of sublime perfection, where some primadona actress who’s complaining about her shitty billing suddenly raises her voice in this amazing, piercing cry that completely chokes me up every time I hear it. I don’t understand what she’s saying, and it doesn’t really matter; the sound of it sends my chemicals into this crazy frenzy, and I suddenly feel like crying for no reason at all. I feel like crying right now, just thinking about it. This is why you should keep your boys away from musicals, Gentle Reader.

Another thing that affects me deeply is well-executed sentimentality. As a rule, I despise naked sentiment in the arts, not because I have anything against it per se, but because it’s usually done so badly. Which is understandable. The margin of error for successful sentimentality is vanishingly small. But when it’s done right, it kills me every fucking time. I just got done reading The Kite Runner, a book that, underneath its patina of violence and pain, positively reeks of sentiment. But it reeks good. Very good. I spent a good portion of the book alternately smiling and fighting back tears. I could see the author doing what he was doing, too, feel his authorial finger poking out of the page and pushing my buttons. But I didn’t mind; was powerless to stop it anyway.

I just came across another one of these little button-pushers, unexpectedly, in an article about this paleo-conservative writer named Peter Viereck. It’s an interesting story about the arc of his life, and of the conservative movement as a whole, though I wouldn’t call it emotionally stirring or anything. But it ends with this quote, from Viereck:

I can think of nothing more gallant, even though again and again we fail, than attempting to get at the facts; attempting to tell things as they really are. For at least reality, though never fully attained, can be defined. Reality is that which, when you don’t believe in it, doesn’t go away.

This completely floored me. I was on my lunchtime walk, head down against the cold spatter of a staccato autumn rainshower, squinting at the magazine; and then I read this, and a huge smile spread across my face, and I heard myself laughing, felt something swelling in my chest. I hate it when words cut through my carefully-laid layers of cynicism and ennui. I don’t really understand how it happens, but I know it’s the goddamn brain chemicals, conspiring against me.

I can’t understand why evolution decided it was a good idea to build us this way. It doesn’t make any sense, from a purely logical perspective. It makes me question my non-belief in a Creator. Maybe I should switch over to the other side. At least then I’d have Someone to blame.