ramblings of a madwoman

so i think i figured out how, biomechanically speaking, metAlchemy works in the brains it works in (most/all) and why there might be an exception in my husband. ready to take a trip on the crazy train? it's about to get delusional in here, folks. here's your chance to walk away.

still here? sweet. chalk up another win for the curiosity column (mine). that feeling, that moment of sublime serendipity when you notice the parallel between the art and your life and it resonates with you, that's what the playlist augury relies on. if you follow the steps, it happens regularly.

this is what i mean when i refer to the playlist "shaking things loose" or "talking" to me. not some mystical force, just guided meditation through the closest thing to a universal language we have. music transcends cultural, national, ethnic, religious, and language boundaries across time and space. it is among the most human things we do, imitating the sounds of nature. it calls to something primal inside us.

when you follow the playlist augury technique, it creates a sense of emotional whiplash. this cycle of agitation and soothing is intense at times, and needs careful calibration based on the individual's dominant mood. one person's dopamine playlist is another's psychic hemlock, for instance.

in the wake of the emotional whiplash are sudden realizations of parallels between the art you choose to surround yourself with and your life. that you needed to hear something you couldn't express in any other form but song. it is in these moments of emotional debridement that the pineal gland is activated by the music, causing equilibrium.

the pineal gland produces many things, among them the dream hormone DMT. my husband was a heavy user of DMT for a long while, roughly a year and a half, and may have burned this circuit out in his brain. likewise, there could be naturally occuring difference in our brain chemistry at play. either way, this has led to a stalemate as to whether or not i am delusional or not, but i still lean towards not on this particular instance since i'm not the only person who has experienced this moment of synchronization.

the thing that makes the playlist like an augury isn't some supernatural trick. it's this momentary linkage across time from one you to the other, the playlist composer to the taskmaster contemplating life in the background of your everyday chores, the poet to the workaholic powering through the last of your projects before you call it a day, the romantic to the rambler rocking out in the car at a red light.

it's like talking to yourself through song. you will gravitate toward media with messages you need to hear as a matter of instinct, whether those messages are verbal or nonverbal. i have instrumentals in my playlist, too. there are no rules for what makes a song worthy of alchemy on its face. any song, as long as it meets someone's criteria of being unskippable, qualifies in theory.

this has led to some interesting symbolic choices in my playlist. a song for my sister that depicts a woman's worst nightmare as an inside joke and another that is a nonsense threat. a song for the squirrel to remind me he does what he wants and one for the ghost about a lie. a song for my husband about how i save him from the brink of madness and another about how i drive him to it.

but it's not just people; i have songs for the state of my country and more songs for the state of the world. songs for my funny bone and songs to make me ponder the meaning of life itself. songs that reach back in time and talk to a version of me i don't know anymore but still love. i have songs for every occasion but not being able to reach my husband is one for which i have no words.