Music and Grief Pt. 1
The author Franz Kakfa declared that a book must be “the axe for the frozen sea within us.” Perhaps that’s one of the purposes of all art—to chip away at the layers of self-protection we’ve built around our hearts. Music has certainly played that role for me.
Our stories are often marked by songs. Those songs can take us back to our first crush, a broken heart, our parent’s divorce, or an athletic victory. Many of us have a soundtrack to the various stories of our lives. That’s especially true for our trauma and grief.
I remember one rainy week in Buenos Aires years ago, freshly heart broken from a failed romantic endeavor. I zipped up my rain jacket, put in my headphones and listened to Imogen Heap’s Hide and Seek on repeat as I walked the streets alone. I know, it’s sappy. It won’t win me any cool points with the obscure music enthusiasts among us. The worst part is it wasn’t even the lyrics that got me—just the auto-tuned vocals. It wasn’t until recently that I even bothered to look up the lyrics. But the moment I hear that song today I am transported back to another time and place—it’s the soundtrack of unrequited love for me.
Perhaps you have a song that reminds you of a broken heart.
Other times music creates a space for my emotions to rise to the surface. In the show Shrinking, every character is grieving a loss—the death of a wife and a mother, a divorce, a broken relationship with an adult child. One of the ways they make space for grief is by playing a sad Phoebe Bridgers or Sufjan Stevens song and crying while they set a timer for fifteen minutes. While their time limits may be too mechanical, you can’t argue with the efficiency—music facilitates something within us and opens the door to our interior world. Maybe you’re like me and you really need that.
Music has played a vital role in my own grief over losing my wife. There were songs and albums that facilitated my grief and thawed my heart. There were also songs that represent seasons of our life together. I can’t hear Feist’s Mushaboom without remembering our long distance engagement and listening to music over Skype years ago. I can’t hear Jason Isbell without remembering the concert at the Santa Barbara Bowl we went to as our first date after our third child was born. Some of the songs I listened to in the past year will become the soundtrack of grief that I return to in the future. Some of those songs might become the soundtrack of healing as well.
Which songs make up the soundtrack of your life?
I’m going to explore music and the role it plays in both trauma and healing in a series called Music and Grief. I hope it helps you see art as an ally on the healing path—an agent of both disruption and repair. Stay tuned.
If you have spent a lifetime adding layers of self-protection around your heart and need help thawing the frozen sea within, reach out to Good Shepherd Soul Care or someone else. It’s not too late.
