It seems to me that Mental Health Awareness Week has been fairly low-profile, though that may be because of the limited social media interaction I have, or rather the limited taking note of what people are saying on social media. However, I have been aware of it and prompted as much by Radio 3’s 7pm Mixtape this week, I have been considering the role music plays in my mental health.
I have not suffered the depths of despair and despondency that some have. I have never considered ending my life. It has rarely interrupted the daily responsibilities of life but I have had periods of desperate melancholia, sometimes lasting for weeks, when I cannot raise interest in anything, do not want to go anywhere or do anything, essentially shut myself away from the outside world and cope with my inner demons as best as I can.
Thankfully these spells do not happen that often and are usually linked with other factors, common to many, particularly stress; there were a couple of times in my working life when I took time off because that point had been reached. The latest instance has been different in a number of ways. Firstly I have been ‘retired’ for a number of years when it came upon me suddenly several weeks into the first lockdown of 2020. I continued to ‘go down hill’ as my diary reports, for a number of weeks and it took several months, a lot of sleep and the aid of an acupuncturist to bring me back to some sort of normality.
Through all this, I have continued to listen to music, read about it and even managed to write a few reviews for FRUK. It has been a really odd situation, feeling able to do some things but not others, feeling a fraud because I could not go out but I would walk around the fields near my home, I would not meet people but I could say hello in the street. All the time music was always there, either playing on the radio, on the computer, on the piano or just in my head.
So what do I listen to? In the early days, I matched my melancholia with the melancholia of primarily English folk. Anne Briggs and Bert Jansch provide the double effect of massaging my melancholia and providing a yearning for my youth, when I and my friends would sit, invariably on the floor, our heads bowed, long shaggy locks covering our faces, concentrating almost too earnestly on the music, that would also have extended to Leonard Cohen and definitely Joni Mitchell, and willing ourselves into a trance of late-teenage anguish, all supplemented by cod psychology, readily available to minds being opened by wacky-baccy, cider and the odd pill.
Not that I miss those days, A friend always says that youth is wasted in the young and whilst I tend to agree, it is a passage we all have to travel through. More contemporary artists on my 2020 playlist include The Unthanks, Chris Wood and Heidi Talbot. There is something about the tone, the key that the song is written in, and the relentless tales of love gone wrong, of death and self-destruction, that paradoxically acts like a blanket. Perhaps for me, these songs show that life was harder for others and that whilst I may become emotionally involved it is because I easily do and not because I superimpose myself upon that situation. Perhaps, also, there is a bit of wallowing in the misery. I don’t really know but they continue to be important to me.
Of course, the first choice from my youth and even more so now, is Nick Drake, the epitome of English melancholia, in his life, in his death and in his songs. My late friend and colleague, Nathan Wiseman-Trowse, someone who should have reached out but alas did not, suggests in Nick Drake: Dreaming England that at least part of the attraction of Drake’s music “is the sense that in some way he was communicating a very private sense of inner turmoil through his music” and it is this sense of the personal that makes Drake stand out. Songs and ballads dating back centuries are at least one step removed. In Drake, we have someone of our time, living in our world with our world problems.
This then is turning into a defence of listening to ‘morbid’ music even though my family recognise that I am quite depressed (albeit with a small ‘d’). There are times when I need (with a capital N) to go more upbeat, I need to be uplifted. The sun is shining outside, and I want that inside as well. What to choose? The first choice invariably tends to be Mali, with Ali Farka Toure, Ballaké Sissoko, Toumani Diabate all vying to be played, often starting the day with Ballaké Sissoko & Vincent Segal’s Chamber Music, gentle and uplifting, sunshine and a light breeze.
Another time I might indulge myself with a week or so of favourites from my youth. In addition to those already mentioned, there is the Laurel Canyon collective of Crosby, Stills & Nash, Neil Young, James Taylor and Carol King; and then perhaps a swing to early Fairport Convention, or John Martyn, and favourites sparked by the Bumpers sampler double LP.
At other times, much more recent albums make the right connections. Lankum’s The Livelong Day and Samantha Whates’ Waiting Rooms might appear to be poles apart but to this listener, they both communicate that very private sense of inner turmoil. Lankum’s inner turmoil is barely contained, finding a way to express how unjust life was, is and will continue to be, The Young People drawing powerful imagery of the stresses faced by the youth of today with all too frequent results. As for Samantha Whates, it is clear that her voice is directly linked with her inner turmoils, and many of those turmoils are similar to mine – and yours.
I like to think that those grey days of being a self-imposed recluse are gone but I also know that they can easily come back if I don’t look after myself, tell my loved ones how I am feeling, accept and understand what triggers these feelings. This past year I have learned to take more control, when to go with the flow and when to look for help. Music has been a very important part of that, one moment a comfort blanket, the next a signal to get up, brighten up and enjoy life. I am a great one for making personal mixtapes and I had thought of writing this piece around my mixtape but then I realised that I don’t have one, that I have several and even then I will add and subtract as the playlist progresses. Listening to music is important. You could try your own playlist or you can just settle for what you want at that time. Whatever you choose let it help you think about how you can calm your inner turmoils. And share your list with others. Who knows, it might start a conversation that shows I am not the only one who feels like this.
Find out more about Mental Health Awareness Week – https://www.mentalhealth.org.uk/campaigns/mental-health-awareness-week