The Poppies of Terra #80 - I Got the Poison, I Got the Remedy

First, an announcement:

The esteemed underwriters of this column and owners of Hex Publishers are moving on to other endeavors, and as a result The Poppies of Terra is coming to an end with the current piece.

I’m incredibly grateful for the patronage and support I’ve received since starting the column almost exactly three years ago, and I’d like to thank everyone who’s checked it out. 

Going forward, I’ll be continuing to post updates and think pieces on my Substack, The Gulf of Selves. If you’ve enjoyed any of the previous installments of The Poppies of Terra, please consider stopping by and subscribing to The Gulf of Selves for similar content in the future. And if there’s any specific topic you’d like me to cover, feel free to drop me a note with your request.

Throughout the last seventy-nine articles, I’ve discussed all manner of films, series, documentaries, books, entertainment trends and so on. Underlying my interest in pop culture is the belief that these  expressions of human thought are intrinsically valuable. So, to that end, as well as the end of this series, I think it’s fitting to talk about Daisy Fancourt’s recently published book, Art Cure, which provides empirical research backing the notion that art’s good for ya.

Fancourt initially studied music at Oxford University but then transitioned into science, earning a PhD in psychoneuroimmunology from UCL and producing a doctoral thesis examining how music affects stress hormones and inflammatory markers. Currently she’s a professor of psychobiology and epidemiology at UCL and serves as the director of the World Health Organization (WHO) Collaborating Centre for Arts and Health, which was the first of its kind when designated in 2021. That certainly got my attention. Her aim with Art Cure, explicitly stated in its first pages, is to share scientific evidence demonstrating how the arts improve health and longevity. Her hope is to fundamentally change how people value and engage with artistic experiences in their daily lives. Amen to that.

Starting with the success story of a stroke survivor turned artist, Fancourt argues that the arts are an essential pillar of human wellness rather than a luxury. Using an easily digestible analogy, she explains how artistic ingredients activate biological and psychological mechanisms that improve mental health, brain function, and physical recovery. Creative activities like music and painting unsurprisingly stimulate dopamine releases, fostering a sense of mastery and purpose, and can even lower the risk of developing clinical depression. Which raises the question: can we consider the arts—besides whatever else they might be—medicinal?

Here are some of the claims I found most striking in Art Cure:

• Longevity and Dementia: Engaging frequently in cultural activities (such as visiting museums or attending concerts) is linked to a 31% lower risk of dying and a 43% reduced risk of developing dementia.

• Surgical Relief: Arts interventions can be as effective as sedative drugs like benzodiazepines for surgical patients and can significantly reduce the need for opioid painkillers post-surgery.

• Depression Prevention: Regularly attending the theater, museums, or galleries can nearly halve (48%) your risk of developing depression over a ten-year period.

• Biological Youth: Weekly arts engagement can make adults physiologically four years younger than their non-engaged peers, slowing the pace of biological aging as measured by epigenetic clocks.

• Neonatal Care: Premature babies in intensive care who are exposed to lullabies consume more calories, gain weight more quickly, and can leave the hospital an average of nine days sooner.

The impressive research by Fancourt and her team has yielded a number of other remarkable findings, but that should give you a good sense of their work.

Before getting into the specifics of each experiment and analysis, Fancourt smoothly summarizes scientific concepts that make the work more assimilable to the lay reader. For instance, when writing about our senses, she explains that there are more than just the regular five—visual, auditory, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory—, citing three additional senses that are focused reflectively on ourselves:

• Vestibular: Processes movement and balance through receptors in our inner ears.

• Interoception: Provides feedback about the experiences of our internal organs, such as noticing when your heart is beating faster.

• Proprioception: Uses receptors in our muscles and joints to tell us where our body is in space, such as sensing the distance between your nose and an object in front of you.

Why is this useful to know? As Fancourt explains, while our first five senses are data-driven, these additional perceptual systems can sometimes override the arts experience, for example when we feel too hot or tired to focus on an artistic performance. They also help to explain the range of subjective experiences possible based on the same five-sense data inputs. Some readers may find these sections a bit technical, but they always have a payoff.

Fancourt’s primary rhetorical techniques include extensively referencing both case studies and human interest stories (chapters begin with personal narratives of individuals whose lives were transformed by the arts) and catchy metaphors and analogies (like the aforementioned one, or framing arts engagement as a “weekly meal plan”),  comparing the need for artistic diversity to a healthy diet and warning against “ultraprocessed” screen-based activities. She also anticipates reader skepticism by acknowledging that the arts are “most definitely not a panacea” and can even be used for harm, including torture. The “tragedy paradox” explains why we find pleasure in sad or scary art, a question that comes up frequently in horror studies, reconciling how distressing content can ultimately improve mood.

At times Fancourt may go a little overboard with the data and stats, and while her calls to action follow logically from the evidence, each chapter concluding with a “Daily Dose” section that provides practical advice may feel too self-help-y for readers more interested in the ideas than in everyday regimens through which those concepts can be applied. Art Cure is ultimately a work of persuasive scientific exposition blending creative non-fiction with the vibe of a social manifesto. In that sense, it’s primarily argumentative, designed to catalyze a “grassroots social movement.” Personally, I was hoping for a tad more philosophy and discussion on specific works of art. To be fair, Fancourt acknowledges that her reductive approach—broadly, treating art like a pharmacological agent—might cause “philosophers... to raise eyebrows.”

“Arts for hearts,” Fancourt pithily writes. Discussing music, she explains that because our bodies are dominated by rhythms such as heart rates and brain waves, we can synchronize with external beats in a process so powerful that a person can become a “living, pulsing manifestation” of the music they’re listening to.

Looks like The Prodigy had it right back in 1994: “I got the poison (I got the remedy) / I got the pulsating rhythmical remedy.”

Let’s dance on.