I love music. It is my medicine. Always has been. Always will be.
Nowhere was this more evident than a few weeks ago when I went to see the the mighty Sister Bliss of Faithless in a London park. She pounded my ears and entered my heart. Again.
The music of Faithless is a bit of a religion for me; the soundtrack to some of my best nights and paradoxically, most productive days.
Friends and colleagues know I write all of my scripts to their beautiful beats. I can zone out and zone in to the band’s unique vibe and output. All I need is my phone, some headphones and I am away.
Sister Bliss excelled herself in Dulwich Park last month with a stunning set. But the pièce de résistance? Dropping Kate Bush’s iconic Running Up That Hill (RUTH) and mixing it into Insomnia for her final two tracks.
It was the perfect ending to my week, having had the pleasure of conducting a rare and world exclusive interview with Kate, to mark her reaching the top of the charts with RUTH, as she and her fans call it, after Netflix’s Stranger Things propelled it to new heights 37 years on.
Everyone around me was drinking, high on booze and festival life. I was also on drugs, but of the IVF flavour, feeling low and foggy-headed; and completely incapable of small talk with drunk people, even my friends. Until the music started.
Suddenly I was liberated; elevated even. The IVF process makes one very single-minded. I can’t focus generally as well when I am on the meds, but if I do one thing at a time, I can zone in hard and successfully. Thankfully this meant I could look at Sister Bliss, in all of her magnificence, and just dance. Not talk or think. But move with a laser-like focus that allowed the joy to pierce my chemical curtain.
Music has come to my aid a lot during the last two years of trying and failing to have another baby. It has provided a blanket and a mental blockout when nothing else will do.
Some days it’s Faithless; others it’s Oasis; or I go between the likes of Maribou State, Beyonce or Roisin Murphy.
I have never leant harder on my playlists than in January of this year when I had a miscarriage.
The sadness was flooring and constant. The shock still shocks.
Kind words were muttered and posted on lovely letters from worried friends and family.
I heard them but I didn’t hear them, if that makes sense.
The first Saturday evening after my procedure, an incredible miscarriage care-parcel arrived from gorgeous friends in the sad know and did at least comfort and make us both smile. A gift bag filled with pâté, runny cheese and cured meat - a brilliant nod to the food freedom suddenly granted to a non pregnant woman. As well as a soft hot water bottle and a decent whisky. (If you ever want to know what to send someone in this sad boat - I highly recommend this approach).
But my rage also raged. The injustice of losing a baby, one that had been created in the most painstaking way with exact medical instructions followed, regardless of the tax on my body and mind. How could they not survive when they were so wanted and I had followed all of the medical directives to the letter?
Questions that went around and around my mind with no balm touching the sides.
I knew it would take time but what to do in the meantime?
Music. A lot of it. All types - just as long as it took me somewhere else.
One of my IVF fairies also experienced a miscarriage not long after - a brutal parallel to my situation. We found ourselves darkly joking about a miscarriage playlist.
Sometimes dark humour with those standing shoulder-to-shoulder in the trench next to you is all you have.
A few choice suggestions for a soundtrack we didn’t want included: UB40’s Red, Red Wine; Chris de Burgh’s Lady in Red; Florence + the Machine’s Ship to Wreck, Rihanna's SOS, Taylor Swift’s Bad Blood and Britney’s Toxic.
It did take time and still does. But my goodness, the music helped my mind and body to feel alive when there had only been death.
As Hans Christian Andersen put it: “ Where words fail, music speaks.”
Even during a miscarriage.
Music is often the only thing that protects sanity during hard times. On repeat. And loud.
My husband often didn’t know what to say to me after our miscarriage a few months ago. He then found Ryan Adams’ “I Love but I don’t know what to say”, and sent it me. It’s such a beautiful song….
A couple I’ve often leant on have been “Walk” by the Foo Fighters, as well as Anna Nalick’s “Wreck of the Day”…. And a good few others that currently escape me.
I wrote a little song in my head to my lost baby and sang it to myself while crying in the shower.
No one knows that. Apart from all of you, now….
Much love to all here x
Thanks for sharing. I also got a care package of soft cheese, wine and cured meat, the day after my miscarriage. Dark humour for the win. Much love xx