Healing by Music

 Sometimes, when you are deep in your feelings - whatever those feelings are about, whether anger, love, pain - it's hard to find words to express those feelings. For a while, maybe a couple of weeks or so, I've been in a weird place. My mind gets stuck on thoughts about certain events in my past or loved ones I'm missing. When I get there, I can't unstick the gears and move out of that place. The other week, I was thinking about my best friend who recently died. I couldn't stop thinking of the five months I lived with her when I was going through a really bad time. My mind just got stuck in a bunch of memories about what was happening to me then.

When you're stuck in the quicksand of good thoughts, that's one thing. But there wasn't a lot good about my life during that five-month period - except for the fact that I had family and friends trying hard to keep me sane and whole. My best friend was so crucial to my sanity. She understood how badly my heart ached. She understood - maybe when no one else did - why I was having trouble walking away from a man who was not the right one for me.

So, recently, when thinking about my dearest friend, I somehow let my mind get stuck on the worst things about that time I lived with her. I almost could not get out of bed until the day before yesterday. I just cocooned myself in blankets and re-played bad memory after bad memory after bad memory. I've been stuck like that before but this time just ran me into a bout of depression that was dangerous.

I knew - or felt - that if I could just come out from under for a little bit of brightness, I might be okay. But I couldn't pull myself up. It didn't help at all that our weather has been grey and stormy. Damnit, Iowa.

During bad weather days, I have a habit of listening to music on YouTube. I will pick one song and then just let the algorithm select what follows. Here's what I was finally able to grab hold of and lift myself up.

The music was like air. I felt like I did when I was younger and my mother would hold me and just let me cry - about work, or over a loss, or in anger and frustration. I felt soothed.

Here's what's crazy: I am so ignorant about classical music that I didn't even understand the title of this piece. I had to Google the YouTube title to learn anything about where it comes from. (I can fake my way through a conversation about classical music by tossing out phrases like, "Beethoven's Sonata .... blah blah blah" and hope no one calls me on it. Other than that, music is, for me, like art: I only know what I like.)

So, after days of only leaving my bed to make trips to the bathroom and to get water, I was able to shake off my bedcovers and sit up. I put that song on repeat and listened to it for probably an hour. Then I got out of bed and took a shower (at 5 in the afternoon), washed and combed my nappy hair, and then had a little something to eat. I was up until after midnight, catching up on emails and text messages. When I went back to bed, I didn't just cover my head to keep out the world, but I actually slept and rested.

What is it about music? Why is it that this song was for me like David playing the harp for Saul? I think I figured it out. 

One reason I probably had never heard that particular piece before is that I tend to limit my dabblings in certain parts of art and culture. I'm great about reading any kind of book. When it comes to art, I refuse to consider anything that wanders too far from the likes of Georgia O'Keeffe, Ernie Barnes, or whoever did the Ohio Players album covers. I listen to all types of music - classical, jazz, blues, R&B, Rock, etc - but I get irritated by anything that doesn't immediately fit my ears' ideas of what that music should be. Basically, I'm kind of a cultural bumpkin.

One positive thing about me (I think) is that I can be introspective. I might be screwed up in a lot of ways but I like to understand how and why I am screwed up. So I started thinking about why I limit myself to certain kinds of art, literature, music, food, people, etc. That's a river too long and deep to swim this day but I did come up with why I don't appreciate more genres of music.

Here's the thing (and pardon me for getting poetic and flowery): Music is so diverse that you have to want to or have a reason to understand the different types. I don't have a good ear for good music. That's because I never developed an ear for it. When it comes to music (and some art), I am the Ugly American who only speaks English and wants everyone else to speak enough of it so that I can understand them. And music is a sort of language.

My father loved all kinds of music. ALL kinds. He tried to get me to appreciate the Blues and Jazz. I liked what I liked and pushed the rest under my napkin so I didn't even have to look at it. Yecch. 

It's me with failing at learning a spoken language all over again. I spent some of my early years around mostly Mexican neighbors. The only Spanish words and phrases I remember are ones that can't be spoken in church. Same thing with Welsh. In my early twenties, a friend taught me several phrases and I forgot all of them except how to tell someone to kiss my ass. I even forgot that several years back.

Again, music is like spoken language. It's about all the same emotions and yearnings and pain and sexual desires. Some are in the language of the Blues or in the poetry of Rap, or... You get what I mean.

My problem is, that I have limited myself to speaking and hearing only what I like. There's so much more out there.

That beautiful piece of music that lifted me up has been around since 1880. (And, yeah, my dumbass had to look that up.) That could have been a good thing in my life since I first ever wanted to hear any kind of music.

How sad that I have been missing something that I love, not because I was blind but because I refused to see.

Anyway.

I resolve not to limit myself. I want to at least know what it is I am missing.

Peace

--Free

P.S.: If you can't tell, this is not the best day for my sarc. It's acting up and I am having trouble expressing my thoughts in a coherent way. Thankfully, there is a new specialist at the local hospital and I won't have to drive a couple of counties away to be seen. I should be communicating more clearly soon.