Last time I wrote you about a flash of a song making me feel alive, a few of you wrote to ask what song it was. Here it is.
Recently I listen to music to make the space of the car with small children turn into some broader more possible time and space travel. Once in a while they sing along as Brittany Howard growls. Sometimes they yell through an entire Massive Attack song and yet still by the end we are somewhere else, somewhere more rhythmic, full of rain and desire. And other times we all screech our Kate Bush needs out into the world. Cathartic. Discordant. Ready for the next round buckling/unbuckling, pee stops, jacket putting on and off, water bottle, snack, shoe location.
With a few notable exceptions we don’t listen to children music. Children’s music on the whole makes me feel hopeless and claustrophobic. We don’t because I love music and I the sound of Old McDonald’s farm feels like the air is being sucked out of everything.
So we go broad with our tunes, we listen to Bill Withers to warm up our cold, gray mornings and croon at each other while chasing the prisms around the floor of the kitchen if we are lucky to catch them while breakfast splats on the floor. I fill the house with loud Puccini arias until it drives everyone outside and I am blissfully left with the power of a soprano and skylight to stare out of. Natalia LaFourcade regularly helps me make dinner sliding in and out of my thoughts perfectly, melodically, helping add just the right amount of salt.
And I pull hard on the world for music to arrive. I listen to radio with all the attention I can muster as the drumbeat of life taps along. I regularly stop and add an artist to my list to go back and listen to later.
Music is a companion at this moment of life. It reminds me, you have a body. You get to listen to sounds. Rhythm is here. Your body is a dancing body. What a gift.
What are you listening to?
Being and Breathing was so lovely. Subscribers will get access to this as well as everyone who came! Come to Being and Breathing on September 14, 5-6pm. Can’t wait to see you there!
More classes are coming in the fall! I am working hard on them over here and can’t wait to share more soon.
Consider signing up to support this work of writing and investigating aliveness! And do it with me through the meditation series. Everyone who is a paid subscriber will have access to a growing library of meditations.
Oh I love this. I need to do this more!!