This feels like a work of starts and unpredictable stops. And since it's about music, that seems ok. If I thought I'd be bringing something new into your life, I would write down what the research says about music and how it heals and helps in everything from prenatal development to end-of-life comfort.

But those articles are easy to find and I'm sure you've already read them. Maybe you haven't read all the science. I certainly haven't read all the science. But we've read enough to get the idea: music is good for learning and memory. It heals us - mentally, yes, but it's also thought to aid in the relief of physical pain. It's good for the heart, the nervous system and the immune system.

Knowing all of that is all good and well, but which of those speaks to us about our visceral reaction to our favourite songs? And yes, I'm sure we can find the explanation to that too, but no matter how much, or exactly what I understand about music (which is absolutely on the not-much scale), it is always a kind of magic to me.

And the inexplicable will always have us in thrall.

First start: On being talentless and delusional

So unmusical was I as a child that, when grudgingly given the triangle to play in the school ensemble, I was instructed to mime striking it. One can hardly sink further.

Over the years I tried a little - and always with extreme terror - drums, piano and for a fleeting moment, saxophone. Everyone picks up a guitar at some stage. Not I. It feels…unnatural. See, that's the magic. Apparently, I want an instrument to say something to me with no notion that I must practise or apprehend its rules.

Second start: On learning

Do you know how many languages I speak? One - English. I am terrible at languages. But I can sing in Spanish, Hindi, French and Italian. Why? How? I have to conclude that the science is right and music is a formidable teaching tool.

Most of us learned the alphabet with a tune. Any further evidence required?

Third start: On understanding what I want

I used to think I wanted to learn everything I could about how music did what it did. The secret language of musicians.

But there was something more. Why did some songs make the air around me shiver? Stay with me on this: some songs sound like what I would sound like if I, as a person, were embodied in a song. Now, that is what I want to understand.

Australian musician, producer, singer, songwriter Rachel Claudio is working on something like that. She's making music that sounds like what she's feeling. Which is different from writing a song about what you feel.

She says, 'If the feeling translates into the song, and the song into the record, then it stands to reason that when the artist hears the song back some of that emotion of origin would be evoked or at least some emotion at all.'

Fourth start: On the power of music

The contemporary philosopher, the Mighty Shadow, in his 1994 track Dingolay, said: 'Music have no friends or enemies …' These 27 years later, I am still overwhelmed by that as a statement. H

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