I went hiking yesterday, which I do for exercise, even though I don’t always like it very much.

When you’re going on a long hike by yourself, sometimes your mind gets a little bored, and you forget to watch where you’re going, and you almost step on a snake. Anyway, that seems to happen to me a lot.

This time, it was a type of snake that I didn’t recognize (as in, it wasn’t similar to the snakes I’ve previously almost stepped on). I stopped to get a good look at it so I could check my snake field guide when I got home.

Then I remembered that you’re not supposed to stand in a snake’s striking range.

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Watching Joshua Bell play the violin makes me forget to breathe.

Yes, I know that sounds like such a cliche, but in my case it was literally true. As I watched Bell play the violin at the Strathmore Friday night, several times I realized I was holding my breath through a phrase of music, and sometimes through more than one phrase, which left me a little lightheaded.

And I don’t even really like classical music. But I really wanted to like Joshua Bell.

So the unexpected visceral reaction made me wonder: how much of the emotion we feel when listening to music is a matter of us wanting to feel a particular emotion, rather than being truly inspired by the music itself?

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