Music for the soul

For some reason I keep waking up in the early hours at the moment and when I do I can't get back to sleep so have taken to putting my head phones on and drifting off to the the sound of music.  This has been so successful that I now have a 'middle of the night' playlist full of my favourite, soothing tunes.  I also, as you know, have a running playlist full of my guilty secret 70s tunes so that Marc Bolan, Suzi Quatro, Bay City Rollers et al get me on my way and keep me there for the whole circuit so playlists I think are the way forward now.  This morning I woke at 4 am so fetched my phone through, hooked up and lay listening to my current songs while at the same time thinking about how my musical choices have changed over the past two and a half years.  At the very beginning of all this, when I was completely distraught, I remember 'our' song coming on the radio when we were on our way to do the shopping.  'Our' song was 'Without you' by Nillson https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G-ZDKirjQgM.  I don't think we'd ever listened to the words properly but were committed to 'Can't live if living is without you' and that song on that day tore me apart.  What was worse is that Ash didn't even notice and knowing that made me cry even more.  Then I moved on a little and instead sang along very loudly when I was on my own to 'I will Survive' by Gloria Gaynor https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ARt9HV9T0w8 which I think everyone uses in times of trouble but it gave me strength and got me through yet another difficult bit.  Eventually I started to take back control of my life and my feelings so my next 'go to' song was 'The Party Ain't Over Yet' by Status Quo and I suddenly found myself on my way back to being me.  This morning I've been through my everyday playlist which I listen to in the car and realised that I've got rid of the sad songs and now only allow those that make me feel happy.  Actually that's not quite true because I've discovered that many of the songs with a happy tune have, when I listen carefully, very sad lyrics but if I'm careful not to give them my full attention I'm ok.  So my lesson from this has, I think, been that sometimes we need certain music to get us through difficult situations but once we begin to come out the other side it's up to us to cast aside the sad stuff and fill our lives with music which makes us smile.  Have you looked at your music choices recently?


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Comments

Frank said…
I understand completely. For the past 20 years I've been going hunting at night with my 5, now 4, dogs. I never turned on the radio as I slowly drove the roads in the forest with my dogs up ahead. Now that I'm 72, my dogs are dying, and I have a difficult home life. I'm mostly sad. For no reason, I turned on the radio last night for the first time in forever. Instead of a happy, adventurous time, my hunting has become depressing. I know my time with my dogs and hunting is coming to an end. I see my once mighty hunters going slow. One is in the truck with me as she is suffering from chronic kidney disease. I found that the radio made me feel better. It took my mind off my depressing situation. I used to think I didn't need music to distract me from my dogs and the fun I was having. Things change, don't they.