Sometimes music is like good hash, it takes our emotions are magnifies them, makes them 3D: they are like an emotional magnifying glass and this is very helpful in having us express joy, youthfulness, heartbreak. Many of our deepest feelings need a soundtrack.
It goes beyond words and back to sound: the way a mother coos to her baby, or the tome of voice we express with a dog, says more than words and grief, the sound of a choked back tear says what our words can’t capture at all. Gospel music, I happen to listening to Aretha Franklin’s music, is as much about voices raised in joyous harmony as they are words of praise.
But real grief is ineluctable and therefore beyond the grasp of words completely but not beyond the handle of sound, of words. It is about melody and tone, it is how the heart struggles sorrows that words can’t get to. Words can be cliched, words can be almost unsuitable for true grief but sound can march down to our soul and pull out something.
Does misery love company, though? Is it private or must we share our grief? My ex girlfriend had an abortion many years ago and I have written about the grief but I don’t think I ever was able to express it and I don’t think I found a piece of sound that spoke to the sorrow.
And right now I am not sure what sort of music could, how a soul can be salvaged by sound. It seems as though for once and perhaps the only time, music can’t seem to help. I go back to Aretha Franklin and I wish I had a copy of that February 17th, 2012 concert at Radio City where Aretha mourned her Goddaughter Whitney Houston.
Grief is the stuff of dreams and nightmares. My friend Rami Jojo lost his daughter towards the end of the year….
I got this list of songs off some website and post it here because… well, because it proves something about how useless music is to grieving:
“Grave Digger” –Dave Matthews
“Time of Your Life” –Green Day
“Six Feet from the Edge” –Creed
“Broken” –Seether and Amy Lee
“Holes in the Floor of Heaven” –Steve Wariner
“I Can Only Imagine” –Mercy Me
“Hear You Me: What Would You Think of Me Now?” –Jimmy Eat World
“Butterfly Kisses” –Collin Raye
“Dance with My Father Again” –Luther Vandross
“Only Time” –Enya
“Why” –Rascal Flats
“You Raise Me Up” –Josh Groban
“Something More” –Switchfoot
“Welcome to My Life” –Simple Plan
“Amazing Grace” –Judy Collins
“Give Yourself to Love” –Kate Wolf
“Suggestions for the Tailor” –Scott Pryor
“You Listened to Me” –Steve Beta
Really, “Butterfly Kisses”?
When my father died I listened to Carole King and when the abortion accord I listened to Ryan Adams, both had more to do with tastes than something as directly as achieving some form of emotional wholeness. Songs of praise doesn’t do it, songs of woe doesn’t do it…
I’m listening to “Station To Station”:
Once there were mountains on mountains
And once there were sunbirds
to soar with
And once I could
never be down
Got to keep searching
and searching
Oh what will I be believing
and who will connect me with love?
