The Bridge at Khazad Dum: Your Musical Suggestions for Fighting The Good Fight?

Dear Brave Souls,

You may have noticed that Joe, our Ed-in-Chief, had written about how I would be covering the DNC from outside, and that I posted for two days and suddenly went incognito for a long while with no posts. Just on that second day of the DNC, we’d had a loved one in our family suddenly-diagnosed with that one word none of us wants to hear… one of the most staggering words in the English language that anyone, I think, can ever hear… and this diagnosis of Stage IV, was delivered with such harshness and lack of care that the dr’s delivery wounded as much as the diagnosis, only in a different way. I think there must be something somewhere called ’second degree crimes against the spirit.’

So. For one more day, I was trying to alternate between hospital and DNC, about 50 miles apart from each other and from my home ….until I felt I could not, just could not do it; that spirit and soul were wholly resisting being dragged away like a poor dog hauled away by its collar, while scraping and clawing to stay with its loved one.

(Before I threw in towel, I hope you did catch a bit more than just the nonstop MSmedia coverage of ‘funny-hats-balloon-drops’ at the DNC– via my posts about the craziness re Michelle Malkin on the street (with video); as well as the Fox producer being manhandled, (along with film clip); and a clang piece on Al Jazeera news org renting a country-and-western tavern normally patronized by tough motorcycle/ war vets. I was also able to write about police interviews re men arrested for bragging they’d come to kill Obama, and all the guns and weaponry they had with them. There were several other articles I was able to put up on TMV)

But turning away from DNC, it is now over a month ago… and I am still writing for TMV and my other column at The National Catholic Reporter online, and am daily thinking of ways to just love and support our loved one. I know you know it from your own experience in life– it’s not fancy– at bottom, it’s just that I don’t want her to be alone. Also, oddly, I think you have to take time to be in another reality (writing) so you can remain strong in the other world too. It’s an odd mix of needing to be in several worlds at one time or the heart will somehow not rest right, I think…

So, today, I came to ask you this about some critical provisions for this road ahead…

I am ask if you have music you listen to lift you, strengthen you, calm you, would you post your suggestions here? It may be helpful to others who are walking a hard road right now, as well.

I’ll share mine with you below… that is, the musics I listen to that I find create and change mood, outlook, perhaps even attitude… Music as vitamins. Music as medicine, maybe. Music maybe even as steroids! Here are my lists:

The thing I’ve noticed is that as time goes on, (oh how short time really is, how utterly evanescent when people are so ill and working toward best possible outcomes… even if every falling star is counted as timeless beauty) that if I listen to the same musics over and over, I tend not to hear them as deeply by the 30th time. That’s partly why I am asking you …whom I know to be lovers of music and the life of soulful things… (yes I read all the commenters here and have an appreciable outline, I think, of all persons to some extent … very rich mix in spirit always, each one)

MUSIC FOR CALM
For calmness, for trying to rest so as to stay strong, I often listen to
1. The Pachebel Canon …Long ago when I was in psychoanalytic training, a study was done re the Pachebel saying that one of the reasons it appeared to calm people was that the music itself had a minute by minute beat of a human heart at perfect rest.

2. Samuel Barber Adagio for Strings. Even though the strings in the last attack are rending, I always feel like I am walking in the sky at night, able to touch things that whirl madly, but which are beautiful and in some kind of sacred geometry

3. Tibetan Ghost Exorcism Folkways LP of chanting monks also is calming. It is one of three LPs I have hung onto for dear life over the years, for it is so unusual and as far as I know, considered too esoteric perhaps, to have been put into CD. It is all scratchy and grouchy on the turntable, but there is something so of humus about it, so something that clarifies… even as things fall all around.

4. I also have a CD called Missa Pange, with Agnus Dei and other Gregorian Chant, but with instrumentation, and it is beautiful and I think, healing of spirit to listen to. Different than the usual choral versions.

5. Almost anything A Cappella that means something.

MUSIC FOR STRENGTH
For strength to be restored, for strength to keep going, for strength to withstand the images, sounds, smells, all of life in these matters, to understand this can sometimes be hellish but also holy somehow, often…
1. The Bridge of Khazad Dum
2. The Riders of Rohan
3. Forth Eoringas/ Isengard Unleashed
4. Siege of Gondor
5. Battle of the Pelennor Fields
My dear co-blogger Pete Abel gave me these musics months ago by putting on TMV a trailer from LOTR. I did not know they would serve me in this way. I am grateful to him. When I listen to them, I feel I can remember that though I am just a pathetic person, also, I’ve been called on a quest/ journey of dignity and moment; that hopefully I can rise, and rise and keep rising to whatever would bring best possible outcome, in some cases, best possible memory that we all can hold to… now, but even especially, later.

MUSIC THAT I CANNOT LISTEN TO RIGHT NOW
I cannot listen to LOTR Into the West; the lines “…the ships are coming to take you home…” threw me to my knees just today. I cannot listen to most of my beloved Chicago style or slide guitar blues right now, unless the songs are funny, like “Four Alarm Lover,” and “Squeeze the Lemon,” which make me laugh in happiness.

MUSIC FOR UPLIFTING
For dealing with the dreck and the asinine, for dealing with the malignantly-absurd, for having to confront incompetence, for anyplace anyperson where there’s unnecessary tangle or mis-kindness or outright evil, I only have one song. I wish I had more. And I will probably go to hell for loving this song so much.

1. It is a rap song that I do not know the name of nor whom it is by. I have it as an MP3 for about two years now. The entire song is an angry male rant using the F-word more times than the word ‘the.’ It is clever, bitter, enraged, uplifting and just the right medicine to reset the ‘heartbroken’ switch back to ‘ferocious, even though heartbroken.’

1.a. That, and maybe in terms of bucking the bloody system of what passes for ‘health care’, if spoken words are a music of their own, then I keep this song daily: Qui tacet consentit – Who keeps silent, consents.

The music you leave here, I will also recommend to my youngest daughter who is doing much appreciated care-giving also, and others who are walking this road, especially those for the first time… or the tenth. One of the most persistent unbidden images I get of all of us– you too, included– is of a troupe of mismatched kids all walking a — not predictable, nice, or orderly road– but a road that has long straight-aways, and sometimes jack-knifes and disappears underground… and we all walk holding hands when needed during perilous times, all trying to watch out for one another’s souls. I get this image alot. All my life. All souls show up as wild, funny, strange, creative, inventive children… no matter how many years any person has gathered on Earth in reality.

Thank you.

Dr.E