I have always found that music that gets me in some way, will get me in a certain place in my body.
Tool often gets me right in the gut, like someone's punched me really hard right where everything twists and writhes and churns. Makes me want to punch back, to destroy with the beautiful simplicity of the hydrochloric acid that fills us. A letting go, the urge like Fight Club, that is released when i hear "aenima", "H", or even "46and2". There is joy in that clenching pain. In that knock-the-air-out-of-you punch of the rhythm.
A Perfect Circle will get me in the heart. Where things bleed and mourn and die. Makes me cry for the love and hate and beauty and all the admittedly cerebral concepts that reverberate in the central muscle. Empathy overflows and the warring concept of man's inhumanity to man and "what a piece of work is man" bleeds out leaving a mono no aware shell. "3 Libras", "the Hollow" and even "Blue"
Some bands, however, depending on the song or the mood or whatever whim strikes them, (Admittedly often one such band is Puscifer...) , will go straight to the groin. The groin that fucks, that desires, that destroys. Makes me want to go mad in some ecstatic bacchanal. Like those ridiculous dionysian ideals i clung to in the ninth grade - well before i ever tried to understand any of it (not that anyone fully could). "Rev. 22:20" by Puscifer, also "God is in the Radio" by Queens of the Stone Age, and "Stinkfist" by Tool. Mmm.
Few bands that i love are a cerebral joy. Perhaps because there are no nerve endings in my brain. Mostly they include those whose lyrics are particularly witty and since we all know Lester Bangs' quote about rock'n'roll lyrics, i can't say that i find that very often.
Some bands will get me in my feet, too. "Pass that Dutch" by Missy Elliot, i can't help dancing.
I don't know if anyone else experiences this or if I'm over-dramatizing, but that's why i love this stuff. Likes waves in a pond expanding out to hit distant rocks or reeds and then bounce off, the notes reverberate inside me and out again filtered through my anatomy, changed and yet the same.
Music's interactions with the brain are profound and enduring. It excites the very same neurotransmitters that are involved with our deepest human desires. And I was just hearing on the radio that even when their brains are riddled with Alzheimer's, people still come alive hearing and thinking about the songs they've loved. So no, I don't think you're over-dramatizing. <3
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