A MIND FULL OF MUSIC
A Mind Full of Music contemplates and celebrates the mysterious, powerful, dynamic relationship between ourselves and the songs we love: the way in which songs work upon our minds and in which our minds, because of the inevitable creative force of our imaginations and memories, work upon them. The book does not propose or develop a unified argument, nor does it tell, chronologically, the story of the author’s life of listening. Instead, in recognition of the varied, fluid, and ultimately mysterious ways in which our minds respond to songs, it is structured associatively, with one topic inspiring thoughts of another; the book begins with a song drifting into the author’s mind, and it ends with that mind still in the midst of listening, waiting for a beat that will never come.
Chris Forhan can get right inside your head, because as you follow his responses to music, you’ll very likely recognize yourself.
—Greil Marcus, author of The History of Rock ‘n’ Roll in Ten Songs and Mystery Train: Images of America in Rock ‘n’ Roll Music
If a book can be a love song, Chris Forhan’s A Mind Full of Music is it, and its muse is the art form itself. Chris’s well-researched and deeply thoughtful observations on the songs that shaped his life are a joy to read! We were often reminded of the reasons we too were drawn to song craft and its ability to broaden our emotional spectrum, transport us through time, and teach us, again and again, something important about ourselves. This book does just that, revealing a hard-earned wisdom that both derives from and informs the music that it celebrates.
—Matty Gervais & Charity Rose Thielen, The Head and The Heart
A brilliant journey through time and the mind—a poet’s road-trip with a soundtrack of popular music astutely and lovingly evoked and analyzed. Chris Forhan knows popular music through his ears, his brain, his heart—and he has the eloquence to prove it and to take us with him on this enthralling journey into song’s formative power—its power to create and sustain our individual sense of self, braided as it is with strands of melody, memory, emotion, and imagination. Lucky readers us, who can’t help but be encouraged by his lucid prose to undertake our own, parallel journey into the musical sources of our being. Generosity, insight, and shrewd love underlie the whole text. This is a wonderful book!
—Gregory Orr, author of Selected Books of the Beloved and The Blessing
I miss the days of mixtapes, friends’ handwriting shining through the plastic boxes of cassette tapes they had carefully recorded. A mixtape was a deeply personal gift, one that shed great light on the person who took the time to make it, offering a window into their heart. A Mind Full of Music offers a similar gift. This book is a four dimensional mix tape, one full of deeply personal reflection threaded through with illuminating meditations on the power of music. I love how Chris Forhan enriches his book with sources ranging from literature to philosophy to the social sciences, all of it grounded in a deep love of music and the way it informs (and is informed by) our lives. Just like a mix tape, this book inspired me to think about the songs that have been most important to me and how, to paraphrase one of Forhan's beautiful sentences, my imagination has flooded them with private light. A Mind Full of Music is full of light, itself, full of charm, full of life.
—Gayle Brandeis, author of The Art of Misdiagnosis
With the obsessiveness of a music geek and the lyricism of a poet, Chris Forhan's A Mind Full of Music dissects and re-assembles the bodies of songs—from the bones, blood and skin, to the brains, beating heart and soul. A spectacular deep dive into the intimate workings of this mystery we call music.
—Liz Prato, author of Volcanoes, Palm Trees, and Privilege: Essays on Hawaii and Kids in America: A Gen X Reckoning
