I have been thinking about how musicians create inter-brain networks in order to make music together and wonder how that relates to love and relationships. Here is an article about musician-sync from the Max Planck Institute:
Making music together connects brains — ScienceDaily:
Anyone who has ever played in an orchestra will be familiar with the phenomenon: the impulse for one’s own actions does not seem to come from one’s own mind alone, but rather seems to be controlled by the coordinated activity of the group. And indeed, interbrain networks do emerge when making music together — this has now been demonstrated by scientists from the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin.
And
“When people coordinate actions with one another, small networks within the brain and, remarkably, between the brains are formed, especially when the activities need to be precisely aligned in time, for example at the joint play onset of a piece,” says Johanna Sänger.
The current data thus indicate that interbrain networks connect areas of both brains that previously have been associated with social cognition and music production. And such interbrain networks are expected to occur not only while performing music. “We assume that different people’s brain waves also synchronise when people mutually coordinate their actions in other ways, such as during sport, or when they communicate with one another,” Sänger says.
Then I came across an article that mentioned how love rewires the brain:
Limbic Revision and How Love Rewires the Brain – Brain Pickings:
In a relationship, one mind revises the other; one heart changes its partner. This astounding legacy of our combined status as mammals and neural beings is limbic revision: the power to remodel the emotional parts of the people we love, as our Attractors [coteries of ingrained information patterns] activate certain limbic pathways, and the brain’s inexorable memory mechanism reinforces them.
Who we are and who we become depends, in part, on whom we love.
Next I watched a video on Nowness, with the French philosopher Alain Badiou talking about love. You can find it here.
Here is a quote from Alain Badiou’s book In Praise of Love:
What kind of world does one see when one experiences it from the point of view of two and not one? What is the world like when it is experienced, developed and lived from the point of view of difference and not identity? That is what I believe love to be.
These studies in your post are very good. I think music may be the most important school subject in order to develop a great society. I mean teaching kids how to play an instrument and perform. I played bassoon in my school orchestra. To be surrounded by all that live sound and have my part to fit in: heaven! We had an inspiring and loving conductor, and we won a lot of contests. There is something about the vibrations that creates a feeling of bliss. I suppose that’s what chanting does, too.
It IS like love, isn’t it. Opening to another’s being – one person, or fellow musicians. The last quote you posted is the most interesting. “…the world from the point of view of difference and not identity.” It feels like letting go of my ego, letting go of judging from only my point of view. You could REALLY love someone by doing this. Much to think about……..