Mahler's landscape of spiritual and emotional journeyings is represented in each of his symphonies; in the Fifth Symphony, effusions of melody erupt from the harmonic texture, evoking emotional and spiritual response. Of course it's not so good to confuse the two. But emotion and spirit are connected, and that's at the root of music's influence upon the listener. Whoever opens themselves to the tonal palette, to Mahler's effusions, opens themselves to subtle and incremental spiritual impact. That's why my choice of music is so vital: I can feel its effects on my mind, and throughout my being, for days at a time.

Granted, I'm a particular intense listener. As a schooled musician, I hear any music, or any sound for that matter, in terms of multiple relationships of style, pitch, tone, allusion, and so forth. When I hear a sound, I figure out what's making it, then maybe I think it has a certain pitch. While listening to music, I open so many parts of my mind that, if I dislike the music's effect on me, I react as strongly as most people would to a bad taste in a forkful of food. Some time ago, I began selecting music specifically to help me think, or feel, or recover from an event. Aesthetic enjoyment plays a big role in my listening process--which is not entirely conscious though more so than many peoples' listening--and. while I'm not entirely on Plato's side when he says we should ban any art which isn't good for us, I do think that I choose music that's good for me. It's interesting to observe that there's not much music which is "bad" for me--perhaps that's because I'm a classically trained musician, and that shapes my listening too.

What's "good for me" changes with my interior landscape, but there will always be certain kinds of music and sound that I find "bad for me" especially in terms of my spiritual orientation, since I'm a Christian. I'd like to explore this further in another post at some point.