Radiohead is the perfect soundtrack for a good exhausting purge of a cry. I discovered them when they released Pablo Honey, way back in the day (an album that was probably their perkiest, if you can even imagine such a thing...!) I introduced my dad to The Bends, and it saw him through a deep depression for a year. Their music catalyzes, it encourages emotional processing and speaks to the human condition so poetically. I appreciate your openness and authenticity, and your posts that affirm and encourage us all to feel our feelings, however challenging.
That's brilliant you could share music that helped your dad. In (Western) world of little ritual thankfully we have music to accompany us through all the stages. Thanks for your kind words x
I worked for the London Borough of Barnet library service ( briefly !) and sometimes I would get to go in the van to deliver library books to people who had tradgic and valid reasons for never leaving the house. I wasn't driving the van so I had to wait until later in my room to cry and weep for the world.
Yes, I knew a few who had horrific reasons for not going out. I worked for the City of Westminster. It was a great job, especially if you liked a good insight into lots of cool buildings. Although the commute from Brighton took 4 hours a day round trip!!!!
Phew. I never realised that a library was actually a giant filing system until I worked in one. Then I needed to leave as soon as I was able which seemed like purgatory at the time. It takes a certain kind of mind and not one like mine...
I’m totally a car cryer, and screamer. Long drive and a good howl are real good medicine for me. It’s part of what’s made me “get” keening. That guttural and methodic cry that pours out in my little car bubble feels like such a rich release of grief.
Car grief is wild and unbound. I think it's because of the privacy of the space but also the motion. There is a liminality to being on a car journey, a sense of movement can be the basis of ritual because of the symbolism of moving through- going from here to there. It's powerful. Anything can be powerful. I scream and cry in my car.
I no longer drive, but for many years I listened to the classical music station on my 30-minute commute.
Sometimes at night, on the way home after a tough day, a piece would come on that I hadn't heard in a while and it would just undo me. The combination of late night + beloved music left me sobbing. To this day I don't know why it affected me that way.
The last time I sobbed in the car was many years ago, when I had to leave my beloved cat at an unfamiliar kennel for two weeks while I organized a move. I'd never left her in a kennel in the care of others before. The look on her face, as she sat in her carrier, watching me leave-- I was afraid she wouldn't make it, that I would never see her again. I was crying so hard I when I drove away I could barely see. She had been a rescue kitten I found in a box full of trash outside of a market in Brooklyn NY the year before-- her eyes still blue, her tail no longer than my little finger. She was covered in fleas. When I picked her up out of the box, she dove under my hair and clung to my neck for dear life. She was my first cat (and not the last, bless Selina who lives with me now and has lived with me all her life). The intensity of my sadness in parting from my first cat was influenced by the condition in which I found her to begin with--alone, barely escaping being thrown into a dump truck--that day was trash day. I never wanted her to feel abandoned again. In leaving her, I felt I was betraying her. Big feelings for this little being. She was a beauty. Thanks for your invitation to share.
Radiohead is the perfect soundtrack for a good exhausting purge of a cry. I discovered them when they released Pablo Honey, way back in the day (an album that was probably their perkiest, if you can even imagine such a thing...!) I introduced my dad to The Bends, and it saw him through a deep depression for a year. Their music catalyzes, it encourages emotional processing and speaks to the human condition so poetically. I appreciate your openness and authenticity, and your posts that affirm and encourage us all to feel our feelings, however challenging.
That's brilliant you could share music that helped your dad. In (Western) world of little ritual thankfully we have music to accompany us through all the stages. Thanks for your kind words x
Just hearing inspiring.music can do this. A good carthartic release of world sorrow.
I worked for the London Borough of Barnet library service ( briefly !) and sometimes I would get to go in the van to deliver library books to people who had tradgic and valid reasons for never leaving the house. I wasn't driving the van so I had to wait until later in my room to cry and weep for the world.
Yes, I knew a few who had horrific reasons for not going out. I worked for the City of Westminster. It was a great job, especially if you liked a good insight into lots of cool buildings. Although the commute from Brighton took 4 hours a day round trip!!!!
Phew. I never realised that a library was actually a giant filing system until I worked in one. Then I needed to leave as soon as I was able which seemed like purgatory at the time. It takes a certain kind of mind and not one like mine...
I worked as a librarian for over 20 years
I’m totally a car cryer, and screamer. Long drive and a good howl are real good medicine for me. It’s part of what’s made me “get” keening. That guttural and methodic cry that pours out in my little car bubble feels like such a rich release of grief.
Car grief is wild and unbound. I think it's because of the privacy of the space but also the motion. There is a liminality to being on a car journey, a sense of movement can be the basis of ritual because of the symbolism of moving through- going from here to there. It's powerful. Anything can be powerful. I scream and cry in my car.
I had a good scream in the car this morning going to work 😁
Hope it did a good job!!!
I no longer drive, but for many years I listened to the classical music station on my 30-minute commute.
Sometimes at night, on the way home after a tough day, a piece would come on that I hadn't heard in a while and it would just undo me. The combination of late night + beloved music left me sobbing. To this day I don't know why it affected me that way.
Sounds like just what you needed even if perhaps just gratitude x
Screaming in the car with the windows closed is a great one to do. It’s safe, private, cathartic and releasing.
The last time I sobbed in the car was many years ago, when I had to leave my beloved cat at an unfamiliar kennel for two weeks while I organized a move. I'd never left her in a kennel in the care of others before. The look on her face, as she sat in her carrier, watching me leave-- I was afraid she wouldn't make it, that I would never see her again. I was crying so hard I when I drove away I could barely see. She had been a rescue kitten I found in a box full of trash outside of a market in Brooklyn NY the year before-- her eyes still blue, her tail no longer than my little finger. She was covered in fleas. When I picked her up out of the box, she dove under my hair and clung to my neck for dear life. She was my first cat (and not the last, bless Selina who lives with me now and has lived with me all her life). The intensity of my sadness in parting from my first cat was influenced by the condition in which I found her to begin with--alone, barely escaping being thrown into a dump truck--that day was trash day. I never wanted her to feel abandoned again. In leaving her, I felt I was betraying her. Big feelings for this little being. She was a beauty. Thanks for your invitation to share.