Stress Relief

When I was in my "youth," music was very important to me. I'm just figuring out why. It was stress relief. It was my form of escapism.

These days, the only time I listen to music is when I'm in the car, which is infrequent, or when I'm cleaning, which is more infrequent. Last week when I was cleaning, I finally started to dance and remembered that music and dance went hand in hand for me. I was quite sore the next day, but it reminded me how I got through stressful times when I was a teenager, and also during my marriage.

Dance and music.

I must keep these things salient because these days I feel like I have no form of stress relief. I'm tense and screaming inside. All the talking and writing only partially relieve the pressures. And I can't spend my whole day talking and writing.

So, I'm going to start including some of my music for my reading friends.

I'm going to start with songs from a soundtrack that I thought was excellent: City of Angels. Remember that movie with Meg Ryan and Nicholas Cage?

The three songs in this playlist (playlist is featured below, but sometimes only snippets are played. To get full features, click on the link, you may have to sign up, I don't know.) have been very soothing for me in the past. Iris, by the GooGoo Dolls, has an excellent guitar line, especially midway through the song on the part where there are no vocals and the tempo accelerates. I Grieve, by Peter Gabriel, is a very, very slow (and long) hypnotic song that also accelerates, briefly, before returning to the slow drag. The instrumentals on Uninvited, by Alanis Morissette, are an eclectic mix in which I can feel every bit of emotion. All three songs have excellent lyrics though I question if anyone should listen to I Grieve if they are feeling suicidal.