Playing the music within
Finding a way through stuck-ness
These last few days, I’ve been struggling with all my feelings about the state of the world. I’m horrified by the actions that humans are taking to harm each other. This follows on from increasing worries about the state of our planet and the twin scourges of human influenced natural disasters as well as the ones we can’t control, such as earthquakes.
That’s not even going into the politics enlivening discussions in both my birth country and the one I live in now. There’s enough misbehaviour and dramatic antics to fill writers and reporters notebooks for decades. I’m also not considering the politics of countries around the rest of the world. But all of that matters deeply and can’t be discounted.
Wars, hunger, refugees: all exacerbated by if not directly tied to climate changes.
So what to do? I am feeling stuck and helpless, and yet my own life goes on and for me to just wallow in despair helps no one.
The first place I try to start is to treat everyone with more compassion. We don’t know what anyone has been through to get to today. Be kind and generous in spirit, I say to myself.
The next place I always go to heal my soul is to spend as much time as I can out in nature, literally grounding myself. Even if it is just a round of weeding in the garden, an hour with the sounds of the noisy gulls and crows and wood pigeons, and leaves rustling while feeling the cool breezes across my arms and cheeks, smelling the damp earth as the small shoots come up easily in my fingers. All that repetitive concentration frees up my mind to float a little and also stills my erratic heartbeat.
Another tool I’ve found myself turning to the last few days is to listen more to music, particularly that which moves me to tears. I get teary very easily; this is not a hard thing for any piece of music to accomplish. But I was wondering why I was seeking out these music pieces, and I’m pretty sure it is because I need to weep, to mourn, to express this sadness somehow, and music is a pretty easy way to trigger that emotion and then lean in.
It’s hard to give myself permission to mourn these humongous heartbreaking situations. It seems like a waste of time to cry. But I also can’t just file these anxious feelings away, put them in a box, and pretend they aren’t happening. Maybe if it was just one event, or another, but this piling on, one thing after another for days, weeks, months: it feels like a LOT. Too much. I can’t pretend that I’m not being affected by it. Not surprisingly, this week I also got my first seasonal cold.
So I listen to music and try to sing along. Sometimes I let the tears flow whilst I attempt to sing along, other times I can barely hum, my words choked back by my breaking emotion. But it really does seem to help, the crying, the venting out of feeling.
In one of those quirks of the Universe helping you find what you want to know, while on a break from writing this, I was listening to a writer talking about lyric essays, and she was explaining how important it is to read them out loud in order to hear the rhythm created by the sounds of the words. She mentioned some research that describes how music affects our brain in ways that even language cannot. Indeed, apparently our bodies not only hear the music, but they also actually ‘play’ the music inside us, creating a physical sensation of the emotion being evoked by those notes.
Further, other studies have shown that listening to 13 minutes (or more) of sad music has been shown to be effective in allowing people to process their sad feelings, perhaps by amplifying our feelings of grief and sadness to help us then move through those feelings1.
The author Susan Cain has done a substantial amount of research in the area of sad music and feelings of longing, summarised in her book “Bittersweet”. I haven’t had the chance to read all of it it yet, but I’ve read excerpts. I found this quotation particularly apt for my current mood:
“We transcend grief only when we realize how connected we are with all the other humans who struggle to transcend theirs.” - Susan Cain
As part of her package of resources related to the book, she provides a list of Bittersweet songs. I really like many of the songs Susan Cain has on her list, and am looking forward to listening to the ones I haven’t heard before. Here is a link to that list: https://susancain.net/wp-content/uploads/BIttersweet-Playlist.pdf
And in that same spirit, here are a few tunes that have been keeping me company lately:
“You’re all that I need to get by”
This is the version from the movie Coda. It is simple and pure and I just love it. Emilia Jones, the female singer and star of the movie, also does a version of Both Sides now in that movie that brings me to floods of tears. Here is a link to that; if you watch this YouTube version with clips from the film I dare you not to shed a few tears.
Another song that helps calm my mind and heart in troubled times, was introduced to me a while ago from the movie Aloha: “Ipo Lei Manu”, by Cyril Pahinui. When I watch the video clip from the movie (well, hello Bradley Cooper), tears flood out amidst the magic and grace of hula movements and the joy of connection (you may have to watch the movie to understand that last part).
Meantime, I hope you are coping better than I am with all the recent mayhem in the world and have useful strategies to keep moving forward and not wallow. I hope that right now we can also focus on all kinds of art to remember that even in the midst of mayhem and trauma, the world can also be filled with creativity and kindness, and yes, even some joy through those tears.
And now I’d love to hear from you!
Are there songs that help you cope?
Do you like the songs that are relentlessly upbeat, or ones that help you cry, or do you just love the music for the sheer beauty of it? Or something else entirely?
What other activities keep you calm and ground you when you are overly stimulated by things out of your control?
So many thanks for reading through and for sticking with me week after week. It means the world, especially now.
xoxo Sabrina
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This information was taken from the following podcast. I can’t vouch for the absolute accuracy of the studies he cites as I wasn’t able to look them up myself. But he is a neuroscientist and tenured professor at Stanford, and seems to be credible. https://www.hubermanlab.com/episode/how-to-use-music-to-boost-motivation-mood-and-improve-learning
I love this post and the impact of music on my moods and, it must be said, my sanity is something I've become increasingly aware of. Last summer I heard a background song on "Ted Lasso" that so touched my emotions in so many ways I built a Spotify playlist around it. The song is "Light" by Michael Kiwanuka, a Brit, who wrote another song I always liked, "Cold Little Heart," the haunting theme song from "Big Little Lies." Instrumental movie soundtracks in general are my go-to when I need to feel lifted. Favorites include Rachel Portman, Alexandre Desplat, Justin Horowitz and James Horner. I fell so hard for the theme music from "The Deer Hunter" (Stanley Myers "Cavatina) that I had it played as the entrance for my wedding (I know, weird). I also recently discovered a French new-agey pianist Alexis Ffrench (cq on the double Ff) who I have been playing way too much lately, because they his music just makes me happy and also calm.
This is so timely, thank you. I recently created a playlist called “Songs for Cryin’” so we are definitely on the same wavelength. Don’t Cry by Seal is on it, and it definitely makes me cry.