As a teenager, I wanted to be a singer-songwriter. I dreamed of being the next James Taylor, John Denver, or Jim Croce. I wrote half a dozen songs, including ones about an ex-girlfriend, a new girlfriend, and a church missionary companion. I even wrote a song I subtitled “The Great Plagiarism,” combining lines from several popular songs into one. I am still waiting for one of those songs to reach the Billboard Top 100. Sadly, of the few songs I wrote, I can now remember the melody of only one.

More recently, I thought it would be cool to write a Broadway musical. I got as far as the first four lines of the first song. Then last Christmas, I took Leonard Cohen’s hit, Hallelujah, and wrote my own Christmas carol to its melody. But I forgot my own lyrics in the middle of my performance at our family’s annual Christmas talent show. Advice to self: Don’t quit your day job. Oh, wait! I’m retired, so I already did! But I relate to these words from the author Kurt Vonnegut: “Virtually every writer I know would rather be a musician.”

With that background, I got excited when the movie Power Ballad[i] came out. It tells the story of a former boy-band member (played by Nick Jonas) who steals a song written by a wedding singer (played by Paul Rudd) and turns it into an international smash hit. Like Paul Rudd’s character, I imagined the excitement I would feel hearing a song I wrote on the radio. Check out this scene from the film:

The wedding singer spends the rest of the movie trying to prove to the world (and his family) that he wrote the song.

When I finished my first novel, Unrighteous Dominion, I got excited when the feedback from a handful of family and friends who I let read it came back positive. I suddenly imagined book tours, royalty checks, and even a movie version around the corner. But it never happened. So I wrote three sappy little Christmas books, thinking they would jump-start my writing career. I’m still waiting. So I added a blog post about what I learned from movies and now have a whopping 24 official subscribers (thank you if you are one of them, although I get a couple hundred views on Facebook each month). And if you read my blog post from last month, you know I just finished almost 900 pages of a personal history that I realize few people will read or even care about. Yet I still write and am itching to get to my next project. Through it all, I have learned that the joy is in the journey, not the destination.

But let’s get back to music.

What makes music so special? Neuroscientists tell us that music releases dopamine, improves cognitive skills such as memory, attention, and problem-solving, and activates multiple regions of the brain, promoting neural connectivity and plasticity. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow said, “Music is the universal language of mankind.” I like these words of Orson Scott Card, who wrote, “Music isn’t just a pleasure, a transient satisfaction. It’s a need, a deep hunger; and when the music is right, it’s joy. Love. A foretaste of heaven.” This is how I like to describe it: The written word inspires my mind, but music touches my heart.

I recently watched the movie, The Music Never Stopped.[ii] It is the true story of a young man (played by Lou Taylor Pucci) whose brain tumor destroyed his ability to retain any memories, and of his father (played by J.K. Simmons), who connects with him through music.  Listening to music from earlier periods somehow awakened those long-lost memories. Here is the trailer for the film (it is currently streaming on Prime Video):

The Music Never Stopped inspired me to dive deeper into how music affects the brain, and I discovered the documentary Alive Inside: The Story of Music and Memory.[iii] The documentary follows Dan Cohen as he fights to improve the health care system for the elderly by bringing music back into their lives. Listening to their favorite music helps to restore memory and a sense of self in nursing home patients. I am amazed at how alive these patients become when they hear an old, familiar song. Here is the trailer for the film (it is currently streaming on Prime Video):

I am putting together the playlist of my life, which will include my favorite songs from the 1960s to the present. I want those songs played at my celebration of life after I’ve moved on. Well, at least some of them. I am surprised by how many songs I loved from each decade of my life, and how listening to them brings back memories of happy times, sad times, and everything in between. If my kids or grandkids read this, my wish is that when I am so old that you need to put me in a nursing home, you will let me keep my Apple Music subscription and a pair of AirPods.

Here are the words from the closing scene of Alive Inside: The Story of Music and Memory (with a slight paraphrase at the end):

Music gives us something we deeply hunger for, something we’ve pursued for thousands of years, rewired our very brains for. We need music. It awakens in us our most profound safety—the safety of living in concert with each other and our own selves. And that is why, together, we’re going to do this one small kindness [of bringing music into our lives and the lives of others]. [It will] bring life into the places where it’s been forgotten. And together we will listen.

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[i] Power Ballad:

• Production Companies: 30West, the Irish Film Board, and Screen Ireland
• Director: John Carney
• Writers: John Crnery and Peter McDonald
• Starring: Paul Rudd, Nick Jonas, and Peter McDonald
• Release date: Jun 3, 2026

[ii] The Music Never Stopped: 

• Production Companies: Essential Pictures and Mr. Tamborine Man
• Director: Jim Kohlberg
• Writers: Gwyn Lurie, Gary Marks, and Oliver Sacks
• Starring: Lou Taylor Pucci, J. K. Simmons, and Julia Ormond
• Release date: October 27, 2011

[iii] Alive Inside: The Story of Music and Memory:

• Production Companies: Projector Media and The Shelley & Donal Rubin Foundation
• Director: Michael Rossato-Bennett
• Writer: Michael Rossato-Bennett
• Starring: Dan Cohen, Bill Thomas, and Concetta Tomaino
• Release date: October 18, 2014