When I was much younger, I remember getting stuck on certain songs, for certain periods of time. Back when there were turntables and speakers. Moving the needle over and over for days to hear some song as many times as it took to be done with it.. sometimes for days.
Or driving back from Sharon’s ‘Clairvoyant School’ in summer Sunday afternoon traffic (24 long weekends over 4 years), attuning to certain music, the need for those words, that melody, a potent hook. And because back then we were being schooled in the ways of energy, I remember thinking that it must have had to do with finding the song which held a matching energetic vibration to whatever I was processing and moving through my body.
After a breakup with my lover during that time frame, I remember Joan Baez’s gorgeous “Diamonds and Rust” as the perfect match one Sunday for the mix of grief, tenderness, wisdom, sight, passion that I felt for my love and our current separation. The mix of insights and longing. Music is pretty much always about love, and losing love. I get it.
When Sam was dying, and I spent hours in the car back and forth from my country home to the Boston hospital or to my mom’s where Sammy spend his last days, the music on my playlist giving me a bit of relief just to move the energy. Again, summer dusk. Staying with him til the last moments, until he was asleep, praying he would be there the next morning when I would make the trek again. One morning, so desperate to get there ‘in time’, fearing he might die before I arrived, that I hit the car in front of me in my panic. Getting out of the car on the two lane highway, sobbing and hysterical at the overwhelm and helplessness of it all. The lady’s white Mercedes.
I wrote in yesterday’s piece about how there are times that the body just can’t hold all of the emotions that are present. And I think so often music can help with that. We need to project some of the passion, the intensity of all those feelings onto something else. We need to sing it out, take the energy of it into our body and use it to flush what else we’re carrying.
And of course some of the most evocative moments come from hearing certain songs. In an instant, a memory returns in all of our senses. Similar to a flashback, our nervous system and brain reproduce a moment in time, invited in by that music… the neural network processing all of the connections, we embody sensation and just like that the past is recreated.
I am still working out the sorrow that has permeated the last 5 years since Sam died. The 7 since my Campbell was taken by the coyotes, turning my hair white overnight. Violet and Sailor a couple of years after. The house, the marriage… the litany of loss that at moments I cannot resist naming over and over. I feel a little squirmy in each renaming of the events, and yet something in me needs to keep making it real, because so much of it still feels bewildering.
Not always. To be clear, I don’t dance with sorrow in the same ways. And although so many of my recent writing has served to chronicle such events, I don’t live there anymore. But these pieces are what want the naming and the writing for now.
Back to music. Right now, Earth Wind and Fire, “Head to the Sky/Devotion”..memories of college in the 70’s and the 12 hour all night dance marathon fundraiser, of Sam always, of being young and free.
About a month ago could not get enough of The Highwaymen…four rugged country legends, so much masculine powerful energy, something about immortality, it stayed on autoplay for days. I didn’t get it. But looking back I see that I was picking up the male forces that were coming into my life, certain beings I would connect with in service of love. A rebirth of sorts. The music answering a longing, bringing in a whoosh of powerful manliness. I don’t know how else to explain it nor understand it. My home was filled with passionate men through the music.. and the vibration of it was at work elsewhere, calling in something I’d been waiting for.
Then another song. Dreamy, romantic, sensual as hell, stirring part of me that had not been stirred, parts left dormant and untouched. Unable to run that kind of current for a few years. And the music calling it forth. Heavenly, pure pleasure, all of my parts alive again. I am nothing if not sensual. Thank you Mazzy Star and “Fade Into You”.
Also within these few weeks the opportunity to be with Yogi Amandeep again for 3 full days of sound currents and healing. A different kind of music. Mantra, chanting, the gong and the pure sound of the Conch being blown. Our neural patterning disrupted by this wall of sound, Giving ourselves over to it. The wild dancing at the end of each class. I live for this.
My playlist is a strange mix, as is everything I love. The innocence and melody of the 60’s and my childhood. A big dose of soul and rhythm and blues. Gorgeous female voices and those of the men who have sang to me all these decades. Tons of mantra and chanting from my more recent love of Kundalini yoga. I love it all. I love hearing something and tracking down the piece and adding it to the playlist. Each song so specifically representing a moment in time. A vivid revisiting, the lighting up of memory and experience. The body’s remembering and surrender.
Romance, passion, heartbreak, grieving, surrender, joy, power and embodiment and sensuality through all of it. How perfect. What a gift. Being able to feel deeply, accessing all of those feelings and sensations and memories through something so beautiful. Blessed with all of it. The soundtracks of our life.
With so much love to you today, and with every blessing…
Fall in love with what is here for you today, play some music, remember, dream, feel.
Want to talk? Feel around for some strategic intuitive guidance? Chat me up.. xo
Helaine says
Why don’t you make a cd and sell it