I’m not especially looking for additional suggestions, though if you have a favourite of the third or fourth type I may give it a listen (and other readers may be less picky than I am and appreciate your suggestions). I prefer to have to work a little bit when I listen to music - what comforts me is needing to pay attention to the music, which distracts me from less pleasant current realities.Īnyway, here is the list. I’ve also recently come to appreciate the phenomenon (among us old fogies) of so-called ‘smooth jazz’, by which they mean generally jazz that’s not too ambitious, inaccessible or loud, and which doesn’t require careful listening or a study of the genre’s history to appreciate. I find most music, including a lot of classical and new age music, boring, and just want to hit the ‘forward to next’ button (not comforting). I also concluded that music of the first two types is too subjective to be of use to anyone else (I happen to find I’m Going to Go Back There Someday comforting, but my wife classifies it as ‘put him out of his misery quick’ music).Įven though I would guess these songs would be uncontroversial choices, it’s interesting how much our past experiences and emotions play into how we perceive music. Alas, despite focusing on the latter two types and listening in the dark for nearly six hours, the cramps would not abate and sleep would not come.īut I did come up with a ‘top 12’ list of comfort songs. It occurred to me that music has always been my stress therapy of choice. grooving, transporting, get away from your cares instrumental music ( objectively comforting).songs whose lyrics are unambiguously intended to comfort, calm, soothe everyone ( objectively comforting).distracting, uplifting, relating music that has personal meaning to you ( subjectively comforting).angry, defiant, get it out of your system music ( subjectively comforting).I went through my iTunes list and concluded that everything in my 800-song collection is comfort music, of one of four kinds:
I now appreciate how sleep deprivation and sustained pain are the torture techniques of choice in Gitmo and the world’s other info extraction centres.
I’ve been trying to listen to music as one therapy to deal with the relentless cramping and insomnia that, together, are making the drug I’m taking to try to mitigate this disease worse than the disease itself. At the end of the show they said next week’s program would be about comfort music, and invited listeners to write in with their recommendations in that genre. Saturday night as I was driving home from our daughter’s house (about the only useful thing I’ve accomplished in the last week, thanks to the ulcerative colitis and the drug that’s supposed to alleviate its symptoms) I was listening to a CBC summer radio program called Sample This.
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