Pretty Lynne Writes

Did you know that some people don’t walk around with music in their heads at all times?

I was surprised to learn this recently when one of my favourite musicians told me it’s not true for him. Because I have a song in my head at all times, I had assumed it was true for everyone.

After a fellow writer explored music as a time travel device, I started to think more about the role of music and nostalgia in my own life. I am a deeply nostalgic person; some of my favorite pieces of my own writing are nostalgic for things that I’ve experienced or things that I never got to experience. (Nostalgia is something I’ll explore in another blog post, though.)

But music – music has a hold on me I don’t fully understand. Music is always all around me, but it’s not a spectator sport. 

I sang in a choir and learned many things about myself besides a minor amount of music theory. One of the things I learned was that every voice can find a place in a choir. Our choir director used to tell us to sing loud and make mistakes, so we knew what to we needed to work on. I think this is pretty great advice for life, frankly. 

When you sing, the air and vibrations moving through your chest stimulate your vagus nerve and have a calming effect on your body and your stress levels. If you ever doubt it, try singing your favourite song in your car when you are particularly stressed. If you don’t feel a little calmer, come back and tell me. I’ll tell you to try again.

Music is a way to help me process my own big feelings. I know I’m not alone in this; most of us have listened to songs to help us through break-ups. For me, the Skid Row power ballad “I Remember You” evokes the feelings I had after being left by my first rock and roll boyfriend, who played guitar and tried to “make it” in the business (he’s an accountant in Japan now).

Singing music lets us feel our feelings when maybe it is hard to do it in any other way. We can cry together at a Taylor Swift concert about how much love hurts and feel like others really get it, and us. We can sing hypnotic praise songs and feel close to the thing we conceive of as god. 

The closest I have come to a religious experience may have been the afternoon I sang U2’s “I Still Haven’t Found What I’m Looking For” in the car at the top of my lungs with my favourite people. 

I’ve had a hard couple of years with a lot of big changes in my life, and the song I’ve come back to repeatedly to help me understand and cope with them is called, surprisingly, “Change,” by Big Thief. 

Change, like the wind

Like the water, like skin

Change, like the sky

Like the leaves, like a butterfly

It’s a simple song that reminds me that the cause of suffering is often resistance to change. 

A kind person sent me a song once to cheer me on, and that song has held great meaning for me. It’s a completely different kind of song, called “I’m Still Here,” by Jim Rzeznik. The chorus often runs through my mind. 

And I want a moment to be real

Wanna touch things I don’t feel

Wanna hold on and feel I belong

Who doesn’t want to feel that way?

I recently met someone who said “I don’t care about music that much,” and I’ve never felt more immediately alienated from someone. I can’t imagine making my way through my days without a song in my head, or a song coming out of my mouth, helping me make sense of my world.