As a means of managing your mood and mental stability, and for changing your outlook, music is second to none. It is a necessity.
Well, in my incredibly humble opinion, obviously! This was brought to light only recently: I, at the moment, am broke. I'm as poor as a church mouse whose wife has just run off with another mouse, taking all the cheese. And yet the other week, when my earphones broke and needed replacing, I spent upwards of €50 on the new set, because music, to me, is not a luxury or a caprice, but a simple necessity of life, and so therefore, when I listen to it, I want to hear it in the best quality possible.
When I am working, chatting, emailing, cooking, cleaning, driving, sometimes even sleeping, I have my music playing, and it just makes life better. I must listen to 10 hours or more of music each day. I remember an Italian teacher at university bringing up the subject of music during one tutorial, saying she didn't understand why her daughter liked to listen to music while studying, and that she had effectively banned it as she felt it was reducing the quality of her daughter's studying, but I totally disagree. If the music is well matched to the situation and the task, I think it has the opposite effect, and in fact improves productivity, as it reduces stress, and thus helps you to focus on the task at hand. If I had an essay to write at university, or if I have a report that needs writing for the following morning, or an application letter that needs producing, having some of my favourite songs playing gently at the same time helps me calm down, focus, and prioritise to get the job done as efficiently as possible, every single time.
Music can also help my mood significantly, in a matter of minutes (or totally crush it, depending on whether my brain's trying to sabotage me when it chooses the next song to play). If I'm feeling down (which, let's be honest, happens a lot, unfortunately), and a song like 'Diner' by Martin Sexton comes on, I will frequently be feeling significantly more able to deal with the world by the end. I'm not saying I go from blowing-my-brains-out desolate to running through the street jumping for joy and clicking my heels together, but the effect is noticeable, and more pronounced than many supposed treatments recommended by the 'experts' for low mood. For helping my mood in this way, music is second only to being able to chat to my best friend. That said, if I put on the wrong song (although my playlist is somewhat eclectic, with everything from drum & bass to classical, I have quite a penchant for very mellow, relaxed songs - the kind that others might class as 'music to slit your wrists by'), it can have the opposite effect. As long as I'm aware of this, though, it's generally not a problem, and still goes to show the power that music has over the mind.
Sometimes, when everything's just getting too much, you can pick out a great album, preferably something super relaxing, turn off everything else, shut yourself off from the world, and just immerse yourself in music for half an hour or so, and the sense of calm that it produces is profound - in my experience anyway. I can't think of anything else that can produce this effect in us...can you?
Conversely, when it's Friday afternoon, you know the work will be done soon, and the evening will begin, beers will be drunk, dances will be danced, moves will be cut, and awesomeness will be distributed to all close enough to experience it, changing the playlist to an upbeat dance and drum and bass mix can just lift the mood higher and higher, sending you out on a wave of euphoria that's intoxicating (or is that just the Spanish-sized gin and tonics??) and addictive.
One of the absolutely greatest aspects of music for me though, aside from the pure joy of listening to a good song, is how vividly it can bring back apparently forgotten memories in an instant - and the music doesn't even have to be good! I was again reminded of this recently when I switched craptops, and in the process discovered probably 400 songs that had been lost in amongst all the other files and not played in years. I put on on an Audioslave song that I came across, "Like a Stone", and in a second, I was transported to a pool bar in the town of Hastings, New Zealand, on a night out towards the end of my time working on farms out there. I can picture every person around me, the drinks we had (mine was a triple gin and tonic, because the barman knew I was leaving soon and kept adding extra free shots to each drink I bought!), even the exact conversations that were taking place, and all this just purely from hearing the first few notes of a song that was popular there at that time. I absolutely love this about music, and I freely admit that amongst all the awesome, I have a number of really terrible songs on my playlist purely because they bring back happy memories, and as long as they keep doing so, I'm not getting rid of them!
Nowadays, I actively work to use this to my advantage: for example if I go on week's holiday, I will make a mix CD, or buy a new album, especially for the trip - just one or two at most - and listen to it frequently over the time I'm there, safe in the knowledge that from then on, those songs will be inextricably associated in my mind with that time. "Marta" by Nena Daconte is a recent example of a song that was playing frequently on holiday in Málaga, and now takes me back there in a second when I listen to it.
So, that is my thought for the day :). And what's playing right now? "In Remote Part/Scottish Fiction" by Idlewild - a truly great song, and one that reminds me (with a sweeping pang of nostalgia and regret at leaving) of Scotland. Caledonia, I miss you :(
No, it won't. But what IS depression? I guess if we really knew what it was, we'd beat it, but at least learning and writing about it may help fight it next time we come across it on a dark, dank, greasey Tuesday night...
