Quick announcement! I'm leading a
3-week long yoga series that starts next Monday all about healing common areas of tension in the body (sore neck, shoulders, low back and other areas of instability). There will also be sweet tunes included, and it's very friendly for beginners, off-the-wagoners, or yoga skeptics. I hope you can make it! More details on that are below.
On to today's reflection...
A few weeks before I moved to Tucson two Octobers ago, I got invited to a house concert by a singer whose band was performing there. This invitation made me feel
very hip and cool, mostly because I'm neither of those things, but it ended up conflicting with my writing class — so I had to miss it.
A couple months later, I met a first date at
Hotel Congress, where we planned to catch my date's friend's band performing. But we got so caught up in conversation, we never made it to the stage.
These two moments sprang to mind as I sat down to write and tried to remember the last time I experienced live music. (That was when "next time!" was a promise that could be fulfilled at an actual real date, and "soon" wasn't laced with tenuous platitudes.)
It's perhaps indulgent to grieve tiny joys lost over the last year, especially as
people are struggling to meet their most basic needs and rebuild post winter storm Uri, while
average people step in to help.
But indulgence has its place in healing. For me, music is a path. For me, there are a handful of things that make life worth living, and music is one. Live music for me is about broken hearts processed, dancing with friends on the lawn of Merriweather, Kirtan with yogis from D.C. to NYC to AZ, dive bar tunes in Dallas, crowd-surfing at Warped Tour at 16, getting swept up in the intimacy of orchestra at 6th and I, and every 9:30 Club show, sometimes arm-in-arm, sometimes alone, but always with that sense of primal connection.
We've made a lot of strange moves along the way as a species, but we got a few things right, and music is one. On a biological level, we know music heals, we suspect that even plants can
detect music, and we even know it can
help us to manage pain.
I mean it when I say this: let's meet up for a show one day, when it's possible again.
For now, my coping mechanism has been to listen to entire albums from start to finish at home, on my yoga mat. For years I've been curating music for yoga classes
in this playlist, and occasionally emerging artists will reach out to share their work, which always makes me reflect on what makes for good back-drop music for my practice. I suppose it's more of an inner truth that shines through, a relatability, a sense that there is a margin within the vibration of the songs to move through pain or discontentment. The music must not be too coy, but it must not dominate. Like any good teacher, it holds space for imagination and failure. On special occasions, I'll turn an album on, and let it play straight through. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. But when it works, hoo-baby, it's nice! I am absorbed completely, I lose all sense of time.
Below is a round-up of the albums that have clicked for me as "Do A Whole Yoga Practice Start-to-Finish" material, alongside selections of lyrics that strike a chord. Sometimes, it's more like yoga+dance mix. This is entirely subjective, of course, and not exhaustive. I encourage you to embark on your own search for the album that holds you for an hour or more as you move. Feel free to let me know if you find anything good.
Until then,
💖
Kelly
