On a recent Saturday morning, I drove 70 miles solo to watch my daughter compete in a cross-country race. I didn’t turn to NPR or a podcast or one of my Audible books to pass the time. Instead, I listened to the same song on repeat for the entire trip. The tune is three minutes long. The ride took seventy-five. I’ll do the math and tell you that it equals 25 times in a row.
Rather than come straight home from Target last Sunday, I overshot our street on purpose and drove around for an extra half hour so I could finish listening to an old Coldplay album, returning to the song Yellow about a half-dozen times. If this were 1983, the track would be Every Breath You Take by The Police. I’d be driving my dad’s gold Chrysler, smoking a cigarette with the windows rolled down, indifferent to the consequence that awaited me at home for having blown my curfew. All that mattered was that I hold on to the feeling of limitless freedom for just a little while longer.
And then there’s last week. Perhaps a result of the rain or too much alone-time working, but I came down with a bad case of Facebook blues. The culprit was a completely innocent post of a celebratory work photo–typical FB fodder. But it seemed to point directly at me and something I don’t have right now: structured work days filled with lots of people. I immediately coveted the scenario. Started fantasizing about a job in a big noisy office with loads of external stressors and co-worker dynamics and lunches at mediocre restaurants. Sigh. I used to have that life. I used to have that clear sense of purpose. When I could not shake the funk and lift myself out of my state of lack, when I realized that I might end up eating and drinking everything in the kitchen, I did what I know best. I climbed the stairs to our attic to bang out some Tchaikovsky on the piano. It’s how I coped growing up. I took all my feelings and poured them into the most dramatic and brooding piece of classical music that I could find. Repeating the song over and over until I felt better.
Music makes me feel things deeper. It grounds all the emotions skipping across the surface of my skin, ushering them through me or helping them find purchase. I watch my teenage kids awakening to this phenomenon, finding songs that call to them, that inspire them. Case in point, my daughter swears that if she plays A$AP Rocky each morning before her Chem quiz, she’ll nail it. Given her 95% quiz average, she’s probably right. At night before bed, she switches to her “sad song” playlist to wind herself down and purge the overflow of data from her brain. When my son builds, he disappears into Travis Scott and Kodak Black to help connect his hands with his tools and find a rhythm for his process. And my husband (because at times he is my third teenager), well, let’s just say he’s always remarkably steadier and happier after a long walk with the dog and some dark Icelandic tunes.
For someone who loves the hum of silence, I seem to need a soundtrack running 24/7 right now. To wrap me up in a hug, tell me a joke, argue with me, cry on my shoulder, and drive the crazies away by pivoting my mood. But most of all, I need music to lift life off the page and wake me up to the world around me. Like the man muscling his wheelchair along Magnolia Avenue and the skateboard kid cutting into the street to get around him. The traffic cops at the intersection up the road and the older, homeless woman huddled at its corner begging for change. People from my neighborhood, easily glossed over, suddenly jumping out in relief like characters in a Spike Lee film. Reminding me to get out of my head, to open my eyes, to reconnect with humanity.
I know the silence will come again. As Rumi taught, “The quieter you become, the more you are able to hear.” But maybe, sometimes, you have to get loud, real loud, because then you are able to see.
