Music Gives
Inducing the right frame of mind.
“Listening to music and reading poetry are acts of self-care: a denial of all other claims to attention in favor of indulging in something beautiful, personal, and true.”
We’ve all been in terrible moods.
You get home from work and find your dog got into the garbage, again, or peed on the floor you just cleaned. Your child won’t stop complaining about her poison ivy that has now spread over most of her body, and on top that, you’re now kicking yourself for ignoring your gut and not taking her to the doctor yesterday when it was a small patch on her arm.
We’ve all had days when nothing seems to be going right.
Sometimes, nothing at all has happened. You can’t put your finger on it, you are just down, in a funk for no apparent reason, or maybe the reason is as simple as it’s a rainy day.
When I have a day when my mood is in the gutter and I can’t quite shake it, I put on a piece of my favorite music. And just like that, BOOM, my mood changes instantly from bad, to not so bad. Soon, I’m whistling with the song and sometimes even tapping my foot to the beat.
Music is my number one go-to to change my state of mind. And it works every time.
A great song will move me to sing at the top of my lungs and belt my heart out. If the day has been a real doozy, I put on some hip hop. Jay-Z or Talib Kweli snap me right into another dimension, and I can’t help but smile, and in a few moments my perspective has gone from one of negativity to “Hey, actually, life is good.”
For an audiophile like me, one of the upsides of technology is the easy access to any song you want at any moment you want it. Spotify is easily one of my favorite apps.
I’m from the cassette tape generation, a bygone era. It was glorious. We’d spend hours deciding which songs were worthy enough to make the cut for our playlists. We were rock star deejays in our own minds.
Once we recorded a group of songs onto a cassette, there was no going back, only forward, unless you wanted to start the entire process from the beginning. Giving a “mixtape” to your best friend or boyfriend was a gift of true love, it took time and effort and care to make a tape, so the gift was reserved only for those friends you held dear.
As a child, I spent hours hiding in my room listening to CDs and cassettes given to me from friends at school. I have been fortunate to gravitate towards people who have exceptional taste in music from grade school up through to now. My first husband was a musician. I am attracted to people who love music as much as I do. I would never marry or date another musician. That’s an entirely different story.
I clearly remember the day when I heard a particular piece of music, making it a decisive moment in my life. I was only five or six years old, but I still remember the look of the room — the colors, the layout — where the record player sat and the riveting sound, the intricate melody and the seamless way each song led into the next.
It was at the home of a playmate of mine from kindergarten. I don’t remember the friend or her name, only the music of The Beatles’ Sgt Pepper’s album hitting my ears and rendering me dumbstruck from the first note, momentarily still, every part of me struck by the unusual and beautiful sounds coming from the record player.
What is this music? I thought and, Do my parents know about it…and if they do, why are they keeping it from me?
“A Day in the Life” still stops me in my tracks. I drop everything when I hear it and just concentrate on listening.
My parents didn’t listen to a lot of music while raising me and my four siblings, it wasn’t a big part of their lives, but when they did put on an album, it was actually a good selection.
My mother was obsessed with Rod Stewart, a little too much, and even as a child, I knew it had more to do with his tight leather pants than his music. My father nearly always played Neil Diamond. Elton John and Barry Manilow made appearances. All artists whose music holds up to this day, and I still listen to them. I credit my parents and that friend whose name I can’t remember, for giving my ears a solid foundation from the start.
When I was in high school, an adult — one who obviously didn’t know me well- said to me, “You will grow out of your obsession with music when you’re older, you’ll grow up and stop buying CDs, and you’ll stop going to live concerts. It happens to everyone.”
It didn’t happen to me.
I still go out to see live music, at large venues and small ones.
A few weekends ago I went to see the new documentary, Echo in The Canyon, a beautiful look at the music of he 60’s. After the film premiered Jakob Dylan played a live set along with his band. All for the price of a regular movie ticket.
Now that I’m older, my musical taste has only expanded, and I’m open to any genre as long as it is good, while I revisit the musicians who were the soundtrack of my adolescence. The most important; Prince. I play Prince…a lot.
On a recent road trip with my daughter I put on “When Does Cry,” and my co-pilot started singing along with me. I was proud. When my young daughter suggested we listen to Dylan, I beamed. I haven’t pushed Bob on her, I think people should come to Dylan organically, in their own time. He is not for everyone at first, but he is for everyone eventually.
His poetic lyrics grab hold of most.
Music is an instant mood boost, one that I am profoundly grateful for. It gets me out of my head and goes straight to my heart by simply turning it on, turning it up and listening.
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Jessica is a writer, an online entrepreneur, and a recovering Type A personality. She lives in Los Angeles with her extrovert daughter, two dogs, and two cats.
