How music has become a coping mechanismGrief is unexpressed love with nowhere to go – Katie Thomas RA Most of us have thought about our funeral songs. We want to pick something that resonates with our experiences but also sums them up. We want a reflection of us, our legacy to make our loved ones feel something, whether that is a giggle or tear. This is grief. This is allowing the music to take control of your emotions and allow you to ‘feel’ yourself and begin the grieving ‘process’ (I hate that term). I love living in the immense, disorientating ‘Grey area’ that is ‘Life’. Like many others, I turn to the creative spaces externally and internally to try and make sense of the world and my place within it. At times where I feel like I am drowning in my own head, and I need to make sense of my thoughts, I turn to writing. When I feel like I have things figured out and am looking for confirmation, I paint. And when I need to let go, I listen to music and if my body is willing, I dance. Music is just incredible; it can change your state of mind and shake you fundamentally to the core. Music can make you cry, laugh, ‘rage’, shocked, but overall, it makes you really feel something and it doesn’t matter if you are listening at home alone or at a club packed to the rafters, all swaying to the same rhythm, you always feel like you are not alone – almost like you are a part of something bigger. Like many others before me, many of my strong childhood memories are of music. I can recall a collective of early summer mornings. The smell of sun cream in the air as my mum brushed my hair to ‘The Beautiful South’s’ Don’t Marry Her. There were also times when music would fill me with anger and frustration, crying on the stairs as my father would drunkenly belt out 'Robbie Williams' Angels after coming home in the early hours. I remember the countless times I would be staring at the dark ceiling being awoken to the first chord of the song, my gut would fill with dread knowing he was ‘on one’. My first core memory of sharing music was in 1996... I was two doors down in a friends bedroom when she proudly announced she had the new ‘Spice Girls’ cassette, Wannabe. Bemused, I looked up from what we were colouring in, and seen she started to move along to the enthusiastic, inspiring beat. She swung her arms to “So tell me what you want, what you really, really want” and giggled aloud. I felt the beat and felt as though Mel B was asking us directly. I began feeling very compelled to move and quickly jumped up and began copying her moves, and for the first time, I became consciously aware of another human being and I sharing the same brief moment in time. We goofily and unapologetically danced around the bedroom until we fell over breathless and laughing. My first festival was ‘Catatonia’ 1999, I remember being in awe of the collective of adults becoming silly and ‘more fun’. A few other friends and I would run around, practically feral, observing and engaging with the wacky and weird state of our parents. I was on my father's shoulders screaming along to Mulder and Scully with thousands of other people. It was amazing and I actually feel very blessed to have had that experience at the age of 7. ...And like many young girls before me, I listened heavily to Madonna’s mid 80’s albums as I was trying to make sense of coming of age and so on... I really could go on, but you get the idea. Catatonia in Margam 1999 Between January and August 2020, I lost myself. I had little will to live and was just existing waiting to die... It comes as no surprise I stopped listening to music. I just couldn’t feel anything. Queue a few weeks after my last dose of Tax, sitting in my new ‘music’ area in my hall, I’d had a delivery for a new single vinyl, it was ‘Laurie Anderson’s’ O’ Superman and was finally in the right headspace to ‘feel’ again. Like a sacred ritual, I lit a few candles and carefully peeled the record from the battered sleeve. In my left hand I could feel the ice through my small glass of whisky and in my right, I carefully placed the needle on the turn table, and as the comforting white noise crackled as the needle looked for it’s groove, I sat back and grinned as if being greeted by an old friend. The first breath beat started and I allowed myself to become completely immersed, I sat there like a weary toddler longing for her mothers embrace. I managed to hold it together until the heavy one chord of base came in 2/3rds through and completely lost myself. I ugly cried long after the needle had retracted back to its perch, looking up at the white ceiling I realised I was beginning to feel again. My 'safe space' music area in the hall From funeral songs to festivals there is a lot to be said for the way this medium grabs you by the ‘emotional nuts’ and allows you to peel off your mask and show yourself. Since the lockdowns the lack of space to dance and express yourself has been tremendously damaging to countless people and I for one have been taking advantage of the newly opened world. I have a new lease of life for ‘discovering’ venues and genres I have never considered. Every week I seem to be engaged with another artist using their platform to hold a mirror to this messed up climate, it seems lockdown has been great for music creation but sadly lacked the spaces to enjoy it. This summer I went to my first festival since the lockdowns and my secondary cancer diagnosis. Walking through the gates, I embraced the familiar feeling I have been longing for, for some time. The base shook my pulse with such velocity that my voice felt a bit rattled, it was overwhelmingly poetic to be in a space with thousands of others and feeling a part of society again. Like a hipster Mecca we gathered in our thousands to sway to some eclectic electronic tracks together. After a few beers settling in and looking around, we made our way over to a stage and began to dance freely to a DJ I hadn’t heard before. Sunflowers by ‘Mall Grab’ became the uplifting opening hymn to our new order of service. By the time the ‘Blessed Madonna’ emerged to take us to church, my body began to ache and fail me. I sat on a nearby chair and allowed myself to enjoy the space but began to feel the increasing dread of the reminder of my impending doom working through the pains in my nervous system. The heads of the crowd bobbed about ecstatically and messages of love and unity filled the giant screens. The vast gold writing jumped out from the black silhouette of screens in tandem to the weaning sunset, it was beautiful but I just couldn’t look at it. We left for the main stage and I gave into my emotion, it was hard to listen to such uplifting music without an air of melancholy. Enjoying Mall Grab at Field Day this summer. At the main stage I grabbed onto my friend and quietly exhaled “I don’t want to die”. She had her arm around me and quietly gave me the space to be aware of my emotions and let them just ‘be’. I had a little cry and about twenty minutes later we arrived at the mainstage ready to go again. I was in too much pain to dance so I just stood there, wide eyed and in absolute wonder as I allowed the evolving rhythms and neon lights to light up the sea of grinning faces. I looked up to the stars and was in perfect sync with my feelings. It was a truly a humbling experience to feel the conflicting rush of elation, awe, melancholic sadness and existential grief all competing for your rational mind. Music awards you with the space to just ‘be’. Certain frequencies can physically change the vibrations around them. There have been many experiments that shows water can levitate when placed between two speakers emitting a certain frequency. Sand forms a changing mandala pattern when placed on heavy base speakers and the Buddhist monks have been using bells and gongs to hit certain vibrations within people for centuries.
It has been a tough week. On Wednesday I got the devastating news that another very good friend of mine had died from secondary breast cancer. I have pretty much cried a few times every day and at night I have been combing through conversations we had had about her face feeling swollen and the like, But I never expected that to be linked to deadly metastases to the brain fluid. Leila was a force of nature and the world really is less bright without her. On Friday I had tickets to a rave with Nick and I did greatly consider if I would be in the right headspace to go. I am so glad I did. Me, with my amazing friend Leila In the dark, I moved hard. I felt earthy and grounded and was only reminded of reality briefly when the neon lights would highlight the small speckles of sweat on my fringe. I moved so hard that my bones are still aching badly, in-fact I rendered myself to a state of being unable to walk after the gig. I shed a tear and thought about Leila. The incredibly moving, almost Islamic vocals to ‘Bicep’s’ Sundial felt overwhelmingly spiritual and Nick and I just completely submitted to it. I know what you are thinking.... but no, other than a few pre cocktails and a pint in our hand we were ‘with it’. I let myself bounce with so much unapologetic enthusiasm that I honestly feel my emotional weighted burden has been lifted and processed into the physical weaning pains in my spine.
I don’t know why I wrote this, I guess I just wanted to make sense of these feelings and muddle of emotions. I hope that when/if I meet up with whoever is reading this, you will tell me your ‘funeral songs’ and we can share stories and memories our collective reality around music. Thanks for making it this far. |
A ' no holds' page about my life with incurable advanced Breast Cancer, in the hope it will give a realistic, detailed account to other young women going through the unfortunate illness.
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