Music guides a stroke victim back into the world

Here’s your daily dose of bittersweetness:

No music appreciation class can quite do what the Boston Globe did today with its story on the use of music to help a 74-year-old man recover from a massive stroke.

It’s music therapy — or melodic intonation therapy — which can trigger neurologic pathways destroyed by a stroke.

“Music is what emotions sound like,” his therapist said, as good a definition of music as was ever made.

Watch the video and read the story and you’ll never listen to Stand by Me quite the same way again.

“I really believe music is his way back into the world,” his wife says.