Brandon Dang

In the era of the never-ending playlist, when tunes are almost too algorithmically available, these writers remind that a regular appointment of conscious listening, playing or singing can be better than a visit to the clinic.

Listening to Edith Piaf in Oppert’s presence, a 65-year-old man with A.L.S., a former boxer, removes his oxygen mask to sing along and proclaim: “I’m in the ring. I’m strong enough to fight!”

Of course Schubert might not be the right prescription, and finding the proper dose takes experimentation. Why is it that one Bach suite calms a teenager with severe autism, while another incites him to punch a hole through her cello?

But then, somehow, it got in.

No. Not got in. That's the wrong way of putting it. Music doesn't get in. Music is already in. Music simply uncovers what is there, makes you feel emotions that you didn't necessarily know you had inside you, and runs around waking them all up. A rebirth of sorts.

There was such a yearning and energy to it. I closed my

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I switched my major to psychology, but not before taking a class where we read Emile Durkheim’s The Elementary Forms of Religious Life.

That book shaped my view of God for the next 20 years of my life. Durkheim essentially argues that what people worship as God, whether they’re Aboriginal people in Australia or Catholic people in Europe or Muslim p... See more