Music is Back

For about the first six weeks after he told me he was done, I couldn't stand music at all.  That was almost harder to take than the leaving.  I used to love dancing around the kitchen while I cooked, listening to ridiculous pop songs and waving kitchen utensils in perilous ways.  (He always warned me to be careful, but usually he was the one who cut himself.  It was the protective powers of ABBA, I think.)

But right after my life split open, even the opening notes of my favorite songs felt like knives in my stomach.  One day, being careless with the car radio, I heard a few notes of Pink's "Learn to Love Again," and I started crying so hard that I had to pull over.  Every pop song is about love.  Finding love.  Losing love. Quiet love.  Loud love.  Love in the time of cholera.  I couldn't take it.

My solution was NPR.  Lots of it.  Morning Edition as I got dressed became a soothing background hum, and at times a reminder that my brain was pretty hungry for material.  This American Life at the gym was both a perfect timer (since most podcasts are just about an hour) and pleasant fuel for my little crush on Ira Glass.

The music is starting to come back, though.  It started when my good friend took me to see Sixteen Candles (the band, not the movie) at some street fests.  They play 80s music -- the music I loved before I knew him, and still love now.  A couple of evenings dancing like an idiot in the street, and I was ready to try some music in the car.  I learned that Taylor Swift still needs a hobby, Ke$ha is still ridiculous, Adam Levine's voice still makes me cringe, and that I can sing along to ridiculous pop songs again.  I reopened my playlists and started dancing around the kitchen again.  I don't feel that open, artless joy I used to feel yet.  Sometimes that damn Pink song still makes me cry.  But music is back.

Right now, I'm listening to a playlist I created a while ago, when things at work were unpleasant. The name of the playlist is "Defiance."  Time to dance.

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Some songs on the Defiance playlist:
A Better Son/Daughter. Rilo Kiley :  http://youtu.be/Lh6liDtDThk
Titanium. David Guetta: http://youtu.be/JRfuAukYTKg
Girl on Fire. Alicia Keys http://youtu.be/J91ti_MpdHA
Dancing with Myself. Billy Idol http://youtu.be/FG1NrQYXjLU
Lose Yourself. Eminem http://youtu.be/jgn-rq3ibzE
Lover of the Light. Mumford and Sons http://youtu.be/nMJUbZrNnA8