Love, Dilana, & Neurology: Fate Or Fortune?

The most complex machine in the universe is the human brain. Despite our intelligence, and our experimentation, centuries of investigation have given us barely a scratch on the surface of the how and why it works as it does. The wires tangle and loop, knotting themselves into clots that unclog themselves when damaged, all the while we cannot come to an understanding of the very thing that makes us human; consciousness. If we cannot answer the most fundamental of questions, does that not render all of philosophy moot?

Socrates was indeed profound when he said it is the intelligent person who realizes they know nothing, as sad as the acknowledgment can be.

The impact of our wiring does not begin and end with philosophical thought. It creeps into every experience we have, defining the way we interact with the world. The only filter we can ever see and hear through, we can ever truly understand, is our own. Everything else, and everyone else, is a mystery we have to imagine in our minds.

Often, people will recommend a band or a record with the introduction, "You'll love ___ if you like ___." That may be true for some people, those who are comforted by the sound of sound, but it does not hold true for all of us.

As I have written, this year I discovered the likelihood I have a degree of neurodivergence. That manifests in a few ways, one of which is an extreme sensitivity to certain stimuli. I am the person who can wear sunglasses on a rainy day, the person who physically wretches at the sound of styrofoam rubbing against itself, the person who doesn't think Pepsi and Coke are even in the same category of product. That is to say; minor differences are amplified for someone like me.

When someone tells me I will like music because it sounds like something else, that very well may be true for them. They might hear the two things as being nearly the same. I do not. My ears are picking up on differences in frequencies, are hearing subtleties in tone that perhaps slip past those who are wired in a more 'normal' manner. Most of the time, it doesn't get in the way of enjoying music. There is one exception to that.

I have also mused several times over the years about the human voice, and how fascinating it is that we hear the same singer in such different ways. Voices some people love sound unbearable to me, and some of my favorite voices are either unknown to the masses, or treated as jokes if they are.

The question I cannot answer is whether our taste is inherent or acquired. Do I love the voices I love because those are the ones I first heard, and they defined how music was 'supposed' to sound, or did I gravitate toward them because I was predisposed to the way they echoed in my head?

One of my earliest memories of music is sitting on the green velour interior of our family car, listening to the radio as we drove around the lake on a summer day. One of the songs I vividly remember hearing was "Total Eclipse Of The Heart". The relationship between me and Jim Steinman has been well-documented, but that memory lingers in my mind as much for Bonnie Tyler's voice. Her husky rasp was unlike anything else I was hearing, but the combination of her voice and that song was something I could feel, even before I was able to think about it.

That was a seminal moment in my development, as it was Bonnie Tyler who would come to define so much of what has soothed me over the years. I would not realize this until much later, when I had lost the potential interest in diving through her catalog, but her voice would echo through the timeline of my life.

The next example came when "Black Velvet" became a hit. That song should not have spoken to the younger me, but to this day it is something I return to, firmly because of Alana Myles' voice. She had the same sort of grit in her voice, and my subconscious ate it up. I did not put two-and-two together at the time, but the line between the two points in indeed straight.

I remember the exact moment all of this crystalized for me, although I cannot remember why I turned the television on that night. On this manufactured reality show, singers were vying for a 'prize' I think most of us knew would be a millstone around the winner's neck, but it turned out the winner was me. A singer appeared on the screen who caught my attention with their first word, and by the end of the song had changed my heart.

That singer was Dilana, whom I have spent countless words talking about over the decade-plus I have been doing this writing. I have often boiled down the feeling I get listening to her as her voice "resonating at the frequency of my soul", which was the poetic way of saying I didn't know how to convey in words the power of an emotion. I still don't.

With my neurology, there are moments when my senses are crossed up, when the wires fray and send electricity to every corner of my body. The right singer hitting the right notes literally gives me a sensation that runs down my nerves, washing over me with a split second of cascading numb. It is a feeling of pure calm, of overwhelming stillness, of the world making sense. When Dilana reaches into her soul and lets loose with the thundering power of her voice, I have that feeling, no matter how many times I have heard those songs. Her voice is like a fingernail tracing down my skin, a light touch so intense I have to force myself not to pull away.

Those feelings come ever so rarely. I got it from Bonnie and Alana, I got it from Dilana, and I got it the first time I discovered Lzzy Hale. I may be the only person who hears it, but there are shared tones and qualities between their voices that slide down my neurons in ways other voices are not able to. They shake the wires of my mind, throwing aside the dust and debris, signing their names on the clean, exposed spaces of my soul. It doesn't matter to me whether I was taught to let them in, or they already possessed the keys, because the feeling would be the same either way. It is that feeling which matters more than anything.

Existential philosophy tells us that life is seen through the prism of our experiences. What neurology tells me is that the prism refracts different colors for each of us, and some of those shades dissipate into the air faster than others. Blue may be blue for everyone, but it is more vivid for some. The same is true for voices, where some of them are filtered through our senses as if sediment in the air, while others slip through the mesh undiluted. When those voices hit us, they are the closest thing I have ever experienced to a miracle.

Does that mean Dilana is a Goddess to me? I am fortunate enough to say the answer is perhaps yes.

The point I'm making is that we seldom stop and consider that our own experience is not the one other people have. So when someone tries to recommend music to me because it sounds to them like something they know I love, they don't realize (or possibly understand) how rare that love is for me. I profess my love for very little music, both in absolute and proportional terms, because of how extreme love is for me. No one can know that feeling other than me.

I love Dilana. I love Lzzy. I love "Total Eclipse Of The Heart".

The odds are I'm not going to love anything you recommend to me, but I appreciate you trying.