Music is My Therapy
The tides of how this pandemic has affected me have risen and fallen throughout the year. Some weeks I don’t feel the impact, last week I returned to therapy. We rolled into 2021 without the significant change we were looking for, and sometimes it feels like the world will always be on fire.
In these moments, the moments where I pull from the depths of myself just to feel normal each day, I turn to music. Music is great therapy. Over the years, music has shaped me in different ways. While my taste in music is quite niche and likely not the most mainstream, the significance and impact of music is something I share with nearly everyone.
Music and Worldview
When I was in high school, I had a crush on a boy that was actually gay and we quickly laughed about the crush and became close friends. I’ll never forget the day he introduced me to Ani Difranco’s music, playing her 1996 album, Dilate, song by song and explaining how meaningful the lyrics were to him as he tried to understand his identity. Here I was immersed in a conservative Christian evangelical world, yet so drawn to Ani’s folksy sound and authentic lyrics that stretched the way I perceived the world. Not only was I drawn to her songs about relationships and identity, but she also sang about God, politics, feminism, and world issues. I was a senior in high school in 1999 when the Columbine shooting shook the nation, and that year Ani wrote a song called “To the Teeth” which starts with,
The sun is setting on the century / And we armed to the teeth / We're all working together now / To make our lives mercifully brief
and ends with,
And if I hear one more time / About a fool's right / To his tools of rage / I'm gonna take all my friends / And I’m gonna move to Canada / And we're gonna die of old age
Last year, Ani released a memoir. On a drive from Florida to South Carolina I listened to the audiobook that shared the stories behind the songs and the woman that wrote them. Eventually, I turned off the book and went back to the albums and re-discovered lyrics that had found their way into my worldview. I realized that Ani’s voice throughout my life had prompted me to further explore issues like the death penalty, foreign policy, war, abortion, sexuality, and more. By the time I finished her book, the pandemic had just hit and the country was in quarantine. I reached out to Ani with a letter, thanking her for influence in my life and the vulnerability through which she shared her story in her book. In some ways, Ani was my first step towards faith deconstruction all those years ago, and the words I wrote in my letter to her weren’t that my faith evolved or shifted or changed, but that it expanded as I learned that there was a version of Christianity that involved actually loving people instead of promoting my own self. When Ani wrote back, she thanked me for my vulnerability in writing her. I probably own 20 albums but these are just a few.
Music and Emotions
Years after high school, I was living in the suburbs of Chicago and my husband (then boyfriend) lived in the city. We had a fight one Saturday that started early in the day, continued over the phone, and kept me quite unsettled into the evening. Determined to settle things before I went to sleep, I called and suggested he come over so we could hash out whatever it was that had us all out of sorts. Unfortunately, a massive snowstorm had dumped feet of snow between our respective residences, making it impossible for either of us to drive to the other. We had to resolve to see each other the next day instead. I couldn’t sleep or sit with the unsettledness of unresolved conflict so I found myself at 1 a.m. digging through boxes of CDs and pulling songs from all walks of life into two playlists of comfort music (one Christian and one not). These two playlists (with songs from albums pictured below and more) have continued to emerge at various moments in my life bringing refuge and solace in difficult seasons for over a decade. I even listened to both last weekend as I cleaned up my classroom and got it ready for another teacher while I shift into a new teaching position.
Music and Connection
Almost ten years ago, my husband and I packed up our Chicago city life to head to the Pacific Northwest. It was one of the hardest, best decisions of my life. The night before our journey west, my sister sat me down and tearfully gave me a case full of CDs. She had been working for days to compile playlists from different eras of our lives. She had made 10 CDs, each one titled “The One With…” or “The One That…” as a tribute to the music of our lives (and my love for the show Friends). We laughed and cried through Sandi Patty and Amy Grant on “The One that reminds me of Mom” and sang karaoke style to 60’s tunes as a tribute to Dad. The next morning when Sean and I set out for our four-day journey, the music that filled the car carried pieces of my life until that point. The music of my childhood. The years my sister and I were roommates. Late nights putting cash into the jukebox at bars. Woven together, the music told a set of stories that gave me strength for the next chapter.
It’s hard for me to stumble into new music these days. My runs are filled with podcasts and audiobooks and I rarely listen to the radio. My music taste is all over the place, but almost always the songs I listen to are rooted in a memory or an experience. Country music takes me back to road trips to Nashville with my friend Sarah. Griffin House and Burlap to Cashmere remind me of Portland concert dates with my friend Cindy. Over the Rhine floods me with December concert date night memories of their winter tours in Chicago and Portland, most notably one gorgeous night with beautiful snowflakes falling around the city as we enjoyed the show at Old Town School of Folk Music. Lately, you’ll find evening dance parties in our house to the soundtrack of the Disney Descendants movies.
It doesn’t matter the song, album, or artist - music can be powerful. Whether it’s a global pandemic, a major life transition, or building a connection with a new friend, music has the power to influence in ways beyond what we can understand.
I pray that you find your song to get you through today or the song that might help you enjoy and appreciate tomorrow.
