Open Journal #6

It has to be some music today, we are going to always come back to music, it walks with me through all of this abuse stuff. At moments of pain it soothes and allows me to centre myself. When I am heading into stressful moments i arrive with it and don’t remove it from my ears until the last possible second.

The music itself enveloping my brain in sounds that seem to medicate and find the dark corners and comfort them. Then there are voices, a good vocal is my lock into a song. If I find a new one that clicks I will play it 20 times in a row until I know it, until I can sing it, until it becomes part of me. I carefully add it to my collection and love it forever and never let it go. I will hunt down versions and mixes, sometimes even covers in case someone out there has troubled themselves to make the definitive version.

Then there is what it means to you, the setting you place it in, what it evokes every time you hear it. If you just hear a snatch on a radio you are instantly transported there. I thought I would talk about some of mine, and I really could do this all day, I used to own a record shop I know how to do this properly and long into the night. So some random examples and why they matter.

Ryan Adams ~ The Rescue Blues

I had escaped to Norway right after having reported my abuse to the police. My friends had given me a guest house in the grounds of their home. Piled high with snow all around, a log fire burning making the guest house toasty and warm.

Lady Blackbird ~ I Am What I Am

I’m not gay but I would help them out at busy times, and this is one of those gay anthems that seems to just always be around. In the UK it was recently used for a Virgin Atlantic TV advert. First heard in the musical La Cage aux Folles and then Gloria Gaynor’s screaming in your face disco classic. For me this is a slowed down heart wrenching version that take me to the very centre of my determination to be just that … what I am … not what you tried to make me

Stevie Wonder ~ If It’s Magic

Sat in a convertible car on balmy summers evening with a young friend aged 16 who was tearfully disclosing her abuse to me. She was about to walk away from college and everything, her very future and all that potentially held. I told her that I was really struggling to find the right words. Then I told her if love was important and it could get us through maybe she would be ok. I reached forward and pressed play on this. We sat and listened while big fat tears rolled her face. A few years later she called and told me that she had just found out that she had finished her degree and got a 1st and she thanked me for playing this song.

Sara Bareilles ~ Gravity

I I have a lot of friends and we all love music, we talk to each other about it, we swap notes. That is our way. Not one has ever told me about this woman. For which I will fucking kill each and every one of them when I see them next. Then I came across this song, just yesterday. Like pouring a huge jug of syrup over my head.

As I am starting to be able to vocalise my pain, this site is getting to me. I have been sitting in chat and listening, talking to people, learning, thinking, hurting, crying. I found this song, and I just fell in love with it, with her voice, the lyrics. As I listened to it for the, oh I don’t know whose counting?, it was a lot and I haven’t stopped yet.

Something shifted in me and I had this realisation, something I had never thought before about my abuse and it changed something. I mean if I’m honest it probably made it worse in the immediate, but now I was looking at it properly. Now we are getting somewhere. I mean I am still a fucked up freak but I have made some progress such as it is.

… I don’t wanna fall another moment into your gravity

… here I am, and I stand so tall, just the way I’m supposed to be

PS

In case you don’t know, her live version of Goodbye Yellow Brick Road is sublime, goosebumps the works.