It's Like a Drug

There is magic in being able to transfer an emotion or a feeling from one person to another.

You're toddling along, thinking about the Big Report due on Thursday, and then you hear That Song. Instantly, you are at the Eighth and Ninth Grade Dance, trying to screw up the courage to ask Doreen to dance this next fast song, because that would mean you'll both be hot and tired (and already on the dance floor) when the band, whose set list you have figured out, will be following this one with a slow song. And you really, really want to slow dance with Doreen. You haven't visited that memory in years but it's recalled instantly with the opening bars of a piece of music from years ago. Close your eyes and you can smell Gee, Your Hair Smells Terrific.

You're walking along, feeling kind of grumbly, because the boss didn't like your report. Suddenly a new Smart Car cruises up to the crosswalk and you cannot help but return it's smile. The way the headlights and fenders and grill are all designed, it is a car that just always looks happy. Many current Mazdas are the same. You just can't help but smile, seeing one.

You open up the pages of a newspaper, and there among the doom and despair and tragedy are the comics. Oh, that Dilbert, and his pointy-haired boss. How about that dog, that cat, those kids, huh? Then you read Doonesbury and discover that B.D., an entirely fictional character you have never actually met and never will, who joined the National Guard and was shipped off to war in Iraq, has lost a leg in that war. He's being stretchered back to the hospital by buddies from his unit, who encourage him, saying "Not your time, bro!" and "Not today!" And you shed a tiny little tear for a man that lives only in another man's imagination, but who has been a part of your life for twenty-five or thirty years.

I grew up learning to read with Sally, Dick and Jane. I "met" them in first grade, they helped me a lot and then we went on vacation. When we came back in the fall for second grade, everyone was a little taller, a little more developed, including Sally, Dick and Jane. When we were told at the end of second grade that we would not use that series of textbooks next year, I cried for the loss of my friends.

You click on a Web site link and are whisked away to that site, and before you even read anything posted there, you already feel the juices flowing. You are alive with the possibilities of the things you are about to read and see. Just responding to the colors and shapes.

The very best of this seems to come when describing a sense without being able to actually use it. Think of a music review, or a food, wine or cigar review. How do you explain to someone, in words, how a guitar sounds? You have to lean hard on words most people don't see every day. It's resonant. It's got a deep, rich middle with very bright highs. The wine has a finish of chocolate. The cigar has a flavor of leather and spices.

There's a little neuron deep in your brain that knows what happy is and one right next to it that knows what sad is and one nearby that understands how gramma's cooking tasted. And at any given moment, a sight, a sound, a smell can tickle one of those guys in very powerful ways. When Miranda Lambert sings "under that live oak, my favorite dog is buried in the yard" it conjures up hours of stories for anyone whose ever loved a dog and lost it.

I have always been fascinated by this. Good music, good art, good design is in many ways like a drug. You are pointed in one direction, you encounter this new input and it deflects you in some way. You're happier or sadder, more confident and inspired or hungrier. Someone has hand carried a feeling, an emotion, from across time and space and plugged it into your brain. You may tap your feet, or chuckle or whatever but the point is that it affects you in some way.

People who can do that consistently are richly rewarded in our culture. Singers, songwriters, chefs, actors and Jony Ive, CBE. I wish I could do it, too. I wish I was good at it.