Joyful, glorious, powerful music
A ramble about the power of music and writing and feeing good
Feel better
I jumped into the van yesterday and the glorious strains of Mozart filled the cabin as Steve switched the radio on. It wasn’t a piece of Mozart that I knew but his signature is unmistakable. The way he brings his notes together just brings an automatic smile to my face. Poor Steve had to then listen to me wax lyrical about how important music was, and also a bit of smugness from me for saying it was Mozart and him saying it was Beethoven. Okay, a lot of smugness.
Anyway I jumped out of the van, ready to run home and set up my first podcast. I love listening to podcasts when I’m out, they do slow my pace but at least they take my mind off the wheezing. The majority of my ‘casts are about writing or history but I have a particular fondness for The Listening Service with Tom Service. A BBC3 podcast that looks at all aspects of music. And as I set off the strains of Mozart began again. Made me laugh, which was just as well as the topic for this podcast was “Is Music Good for You?”
It’s a great episode on how music can calm you down, make you feel better but also make you feel a lot worse. Tom talked about how the US army tortured prisoners of war with 24hr rock music. He played a sample and I listened to it, thinking they I could withstand torture. He then played Barney the Purple Dinosaur – I realised that with the right music I would cave within seconds. 😀
Write better
The ambient music section however also rang a bell with a previous podcast from one of the writing episodes. The Self Publishing Formula is one of my absolute favourites and the other week they interviewed the owner of BrainFM, an app that helps you focus or relax by using specially engineered music. They’ve done lots of studies tracking brain waves, imaging the brain and lots of other cool stuff and it seems like their stuff actually works. So I gave it a try and you know what? It did seem to work, but my lovely new noise cancelling headphones may have had a hand in that. Either way, I got loads done.
So, there we have it music can be good for you, bad for you and even make you write more.
Huzzah and on with the Mozart!
And for a change of pace
Liz Hurley as well as being the owner of this blog, runs a bookshop in Cornwall, right by the sea and writes books. You can buy them in her shop (of course), Waterstones and other outlets, as well as Amazon.
When she’s not reading, she’s writing and when she’s not writing, she’s walking. And when she’s not doing any of that she’s binging on box sets and sleeping.
This website is for her fictional works. Her Cornish non-fiction titles and walking guides can be found at https://www.cornishwalks.com
