The Healing Power of Music

Isn't it amazing how we can listen to a song and it will take us back to a remembered time with extraordinary visceral clarity? I remember one of the few times I ever saw my Dad cry was when I was sitting next to him at the Broadway musical: My Fair Lady.  Julie Andrews was singing, "I Could Have Danced All Night, and I saw a tear roll down my Daddy's cheek.  It was such a beautiful moment.  My Dad also loved the song,"Mack The Knife,"  and he said he wanted it played at his funeral.  I never knew if he was kidding or not, but I arranged to have "Mack The Knife" played as guests left the memorial party!

I remember we used to always have music playing on the record player in the livingroom at home when I was growing up. . . when I was very young it was my parents music.  One tune that inspired me greatly was "Jezebel" by Frankie Lane. I was about five or six years old and I was trying to learn how to play the castanets.  I'd put on "Jezebel" and whirled and twirled clacking my little castanets.  It was thrilling, and I'm sure quite a spectacle to behold  watching a little five-year-old girl dancing passionately to the song "Jezebel"!

 Music has healing qualities, too. When I was little, my Mom used to crush asperin in a spoon and put a little sugar and water with it so I would enjoy swallowing it. Music can be like that. It touches places inside ourselves that little else can. Sometimes, it "breaks our hearts open!" If I need to cry and can't seem to get the tears flowing, it gives me a "kick start." I put on a song selected strategically for that purpose, and it works most every time. I believe that it helps heal hurts, gives hope, and unites hearts. It's God's way of "giving a little sugar" so we can swallow some of the medicine of llife's learning.

As a young teenager, I remember listening to a radio station play Dion's "Runaway" about 20 times one night - consecutively.  I listened to it every time.  I wonder what it was that made me (and others) so attached to that song? Bonnie Raitt recorded the song, too - that gives it immediate credibility in my book!  Eventually I wrote a parody of the song and performed it many times about a middle class couple, Harry and Blanche, who had settled into an unimaginative "tv dinner lifestyle" and the husband goes "bonkers" one night and runs out the screen door when his wife asks him if he would like a "coors light."  But that's another story for another time.

I'd love to hear about any music that has inspired, healed, or made you a "Runaway!" 

 

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