This might be the corniest post I ever share, because Rachel Platten's "Fight Song" is so generic and presented from an extremely privileged position - but it's also motivated a lot of folks, because it has a great vibe.
So... I'm going to create a thread of songs that actually inspire me, but this opener is a universal favourite - and a huge invitation to add your own.
What moves you forward (spiritual songs welcome too) when the world feels too hard?
And as a good chaser?
I always go back to Marvin Gaye's "Inner City Blues" - with the original video, which reminds me how much our global crises have NOT changed in 50 years.
We have better gadgets.
But do we have better humanity?
"Make me wanna holla - the way they do my life! This ain't livin', this ain't livin'..."
K'naan is best known for "Waving Flag", but he lived through some terrible survivor's guilt - getting out of a war-torn situation, leaving family behind because he couldn't save them.
I feel that pain every time I liste to this counsel, that we just need to "Take A Minute".
"And any man who know a thing know he don't know a damn damn thing at all. And every time I felt the hurtin' I felt the givin' get me off the wall.."
Where it all began for me, though--the song that really woke me to my humanism--was Oliver Mtukudzi's "Todii". It was like nothing I'd ever heard before. So impossible to sit still to!
But this Tuku classic is about helplessness in the face of an African AIDS epidemic spread by men forcing unprotected sex on their wives, passing on infection to the babies. It's the quintessential "when answers are not easy, let us at least be in harmony with our grief" jam.
How have I gone this far without bringing Nina Simone into the picture?
She's so famous for "Mississippi Goddamn", but her heart pours out in so many pieces. This one, I love because of how universally relevant its longing is.
"I wish I could share
All the love that's in my heart
Remove all the bars
That keep us apart
I wish you could know
What it means to be me
Then you'd see and agree
That every man should be free"
And although I am 100% atheist?
I am SUCH a sucker for a good "take me to the river" song.
It is the human ache - across cultures, religions, contexts - to do something that could wipe away all our wounds, our scars, our failings, our transgressions. OH if it were so easy!
Leon Bridges captures so beautifully the weariness of that shame, blending the spiritual dimension (for some) with the everyday living in which we *actually* have to work to feel reborn.
A good chaser to Leon Bridges, by the by, is Michael Kiwanuka. His "Cold Little Heart" is even better with the video, because it shows the tension we live with, day by day - the hurt we carry, and the life we try to build around it.
Life is so fragile.
If you follow the news, it's just stats.
But it's fragile - and *loved*.
The people we've lost this last month?
All loved.
"Bleeding. I'm bleeding - my cold little heart! Oh, I... can't stand myself."
When I wrote THEN RAISE THE DEAD MAN HIGH, I listened to a great deal of old Soviet music (as befits a story set from 1920s to 1950s USSR), but also Laboratorium Piesni - a group committed to reclaiming traditional songs from Eastern European contexts, including Belarus, the setting of Part II in my grim story.
When war broke out last year, this was the group's response:
"Sound moves and touches in us both what is painful and what is full of hope and love."
https://youtu.be/z2RDVnXtn3I
And while I'm focussing on brilliant women's groups...
"Canción Sin Miedo" (Song without fear) is a modern Colombian resistance classic, in which women from every walk of life--Indigenous, Afrocolombiana, rural, trans--stand together against violence.
Because you can bet your bippy that every group, however righteous it feels in its own demographic cause, perpetuates harm against feminized people at home when frustrated at its lack of external process.
This is the WEIRDEST song for when the world is messed up, but it soothes me every time.
I don't even pay attention to the main lyrics. I'm here for the chorus and the melody. The chorus especially reminds us how small all our problems are, in the grand scheme of things.
And sometimes?
Sometimes that's exactly what one needs to hear.
All of this will pass.
We are not magnificent.
But the sheer gift of existence... is.
Good night, CoSo. 🌙
Go gently, ok?
https://youtu.be/TWcyIpul8OE
(Tomorrow I'm going to start an extreme regimen for my health, because I have no idea how else to get rid of the stress I've been living with this past month - the routine internal tremors, the constant stress headaches - but I appreciate your presence with so much of it. I'm not doing well right now, in part because the world isn't doing well right now. But I am grateful - oh, am I grateful! - I'm not alone in either this precarity or this grief. Thanks for being along for the terrible ride. 💙)
@MLClark so many to choose from (not that I get sad a lot!) but this is a perennial favorite: https://youtu.be/R9ncBUcInTM
@MLClark Start with a good night's sleep and drink plenty of water. The change in seasons can rob the body of fluids without us realizing it.
#Peace and #tranquility to you tonight
@MLClark Right now we are all stressing. I'm trying to get back to writing and stuff. Another reason why I'm not on any of the platforms as much. We are all in this mess together.
Thank you for that affirmation, Nick. On the Bluesky, Mastodon, & X platforms, there are plenty of writers carrying on as if it's business as usual. It's not, though - we're in two wars amid catastrophic climate change - & the failure of folks in creative fields to recognize the onus upon them to respond to the times in which they're living in is... tough.
I sorely appreciate the reminder that I'm not the only one despairing at how to exist creatively amid disaster.
Thank you.
@MLClark It's about the tribe.
*hugs*
I will light a candle for you. so you do not get lost on the path you want to take.
we are all struggling, but we are being made stronger in the process.
@MLClark ((💛))
Appreciate your presence here and as always, you words and humanity shared.
Sweet dreams✨ my friend. As was suggested, hydrate and eat well. Less sweets and more leafy greens. Good Rest.
@MLClark May your regimen be extremely gentle to your soul. May your creative spirit soar. May you rest in being until you are ready for doing.❤️🙏❤️
@MLClark You're such a good soul. I hope you're able to find some respite. 🤍
@MLClark I linked to this the other night. I'm not huge on Bon Iver (more of a Fleet Foxes listener), but this one is just about perfect.😌
You're SO right. There's only one other Bon Iver I ever have any interest in revisiting - but this one stands alone. Thanks for affirming me in my gut feeling about the perfection of the piece!
Alice Cooper - I am made of you
This extraordinary hybrid of love song to his fans and worship of his God reminds me of who I am and where I come from.
https://youtu.be/2xLPpVrI8cE?si=Hz4OgRlKLHArwVtn
Demon Hunter - Lifewar
There are times when life just feels like such a battle. This song just nails what that can be like.
https://youtu.be/TFKfqOb7Cok?si=Xin282CwYup3Gm5n
P.O.D - The Messenjah
When I feel attacked for my faith, this hits the spot every time.
🤗 Thank you for feeling safe to bring your whole self and truth to this ask, Stuey! Great choices. Another P.O.D. will on my list, too.
@MLClark I find that often when things are too hard, my brain really just wants to check out and listen to some Dance With the Dead... But aside from that, this song has layered meaning that makes me have feelings. And it's just good.
Sinkane- U'Huh
https://youtu.be/LSgmgkyhPZ4
Cohen's music spoke to me during a tough decade. This song helped me maintain a sense of objectivity as i was wallowing in myself.
The Guests - Leonard Cohen
Oh, how could I have forgotten Cohen! Thank you for including him for me! 🤗
My sister, when hearing Cohen, "what are these? dirges?" Pretty sure she has forgotten him
YOU WANT IT DARKER was the last album I bought in Canada. He was truly the master of holding light in balance with the heaviness of life. I'm so thankful he didn't live to see what we did to the world after his passing. His memory is a blessing.
"If thine is the glory
mine must be the shame
You want it darker?
Hineni hineni...
I'm ready, my lord."
"we kill the flame". holding it against those odds though, describes "the open hearted few".
Another potent salvo--
"I've seen you change the water into wine
I've seen you change it back to water, too
I sit at your table every night
I try but I just don't get by with you
I wish there was a treaty we could sign
I do not care who takes this bloody hill
I'm angry and I'm tired all the time
I wish there was a treaty,
I wish there was a treaty
Between your love and mine"
Now I wish he *were* here to name it all.
Thank you. This was healing to revisit.
https://youtu.be/NU5FPAR7ass
Another sister is a Lutheran Pastor. Recently she's been questioning her faith due to the loss of a daughter to cancer, our father's passing, a couple of her b-i-l's deaths from cancer, all exacerbated by her parishioners' lack of sympathy for her struggles. I try to encourage her to keep her faith, while i've little faith in a spirit which doesn't find a way to manifest broadly enough in individual behavior. At least not in ways that overcome an overarching sense of doom. Yet we try.
I'm atheist, but also secular/global humanist.
I love the "humanist" identity because it shares what I believe in, rather than what I don't - and I get to share it with Christian humanists, Muslim humanists, Jewish humanists - anyone who sees human agency as important.
Each of us, in our communities, with the stories that matter to us, creates the agency to overcome that sense of doom. ❤️ Even and especially when it's hard.
Thank you for your presence with her in her time of need.
#CoSoMusic
#GoNotGentlyPlaylist
Now THIS is the kind of song I resonate with deeply. It comes from hard-won experience of how difficult life is.
One thing that has *broken* me this past month is not all the horrible videos I've watched to debunk and assess the complexity of war this past month alone... but the keyboard warriors. The people treating this as a game.
We are wounded and it is OKAY to rage.
Just remember what, exactly, you're raging against when you do.
https://youtu.be/bcsCc2kKMUo