I like the quiet. When the stillness is so great, you feel it in the air and you can breathe it in. When the silence is pounding on your ears, and you can hear blood rushing through them with every heartbeat.

Imagine my dismay, then, when I step out of my apartment and my building is playing anonymous 2010s hits in the hallways and elevators. I’m then made to hear throwbacks from other decades as I’m trying to have my lunch in the establishment of the day. Then, when I am working in the Daily Trojan newsroom and it is far too late and I am far too wrung of motivation, someone decides it’s time to blast a quirky assemblage of musical theater’s least palatable offerings. 

This is not to say I hate music or that I fundamentally detest its public usage. Not at all. My ultimate problem is that I love it too much.

Music is a physical experience for me. Not because I have a powdered wig or am wearing a monocle and writing this article with quill and ink by candlelight. Pieces I truly adore have this grip on my being — they wash me in chills and goosebumps; my heart hums and I am colored inside by emotion. It’s a full-bodied, religious experience. I am simultaneously lifted and grounded by it.

When I slip on my headphones and press play, my skin begins to tingle and my chest fills with warm butterflies, and I feel the world falling away. I’m transported to an unseen place without time or space.

Scientists are still looking into why some folks have this relationship to music, but according to a number of studies, these intense aesthetic reactions are linked to higher connectivity between the auditory cortex and emotional processing areas, which can lead to the emergence of sensation from external stimuli; kind of like emotional synesthesia. 

A few artists do this for me. Some that come to mind are Dire Straits, Charly García, Guns N’ Roses, Def Leppard, Pharrell Williams and Antonio Vivaldi. This eclectic collection of composers has few superficial commonalities: they are from different eras, countries, backgrounds and styles. On different days and in different moods, I sit down with a different one. 

But the throughline here, at least what I have deduced, is their artistic focus on emotion. Music, for many of them, is played not just by instruments but by heartstrings. The music speaks a different language, one that I — quite involuntarily — pick up on.

Music is itself a way of feeling. I can get so caught up in the works of these artists that I try to peel away at it looking for more. How Mark Knopfler portrays emotion through his guitar or how the meticulous soundscapes of Charly shift as a song progresses. Music taps into so much unadulterated feeling that it’s almost inevitable that I would empathize with the artist and their process. I can’t handle music as an ambiance; it takes center stage whether I like it or not. For me, listening to music is an act of intent.

This high, though, is not endless. Music, for all of its splendor, is quite taxing. Too much music and I may need respite for up to a week. It is so directly connected to my cognition that I have to space its dosage; otherwise I fry. The music playing everywhere — aside from a time City Tacos had the nerve to play “Karma Chameleon” — doesn’t elicit these visceral responses but still erodes my tolerance for stimulation. At the end of a long, noisy day, I don’t have the room within me to feel the music.

I am cursed to live in a world that commodifies music, one that makes it a backdrop to add some kind of meaning to the monotonous everyday that structures our lives. Music is treated as a distraction, a soundtrack; mere filler. And I’m caught right in the crosshairs. 

I greatly empathize with Anton Ego of “Ratatouille” (2007) over this last point in particular. Dramatically, he quipped to the trembling Linguini, “I don’t like food; I love it. If I don’t love it, I don’t swallow.” 

While taken initially in the context of pretension, it is ultimately revealed that his passion evolved from his intense emotional relationship with good food, taking him places he could seldom otherwise go. Anton Ego was never the villain; he simply had lost that emotional connection through years of consumption without meaning. 

I don’t think I’ll ever get used to the constant drone of music in my quest for silence. Nor will I find appreciation for unsolicited playlists. I need silence, an all but depleted resource. But when I do find it, I can put on my headphones and be lifted elsewhere. And that is worth the wait.

This is to say, I don’t like music; I love it.

​“Jam Journal” is a rotating column featuring a new Daily Trojan editor in each installment commenting on the music most important to them. Daniel Pons is the Spanish Supplement editor at the Daily Trojan.