3 Favorite Songs; WEGO Challenge Continues
Getting ready to go to the doctor today. Kind of nervous but I’m enjoying the WEGO National Health Blog Post Month. I’ve been participating since last week and today’s prompt has me psyched. I have blogged before about the importance of music in surviving chronic pain. Indeed daily pain and fatigue are a war; music is a powerful weapon in our arsenal! Today’s prompt is below:
Top Three Tuesdays
: Name three songs that you can listen to that get you out of a low point or lift your spirits.
My Answer:
“Your Love Keeps Lifting Me Higher” by Jackie Wilson: This song has some weird medicinal effect on my Polycystic Ovarian Syndrome (PCOS) pain. I have felt uplifted by other songs in the past but they have not alleviated my physical pain—this is a new phenomenon for me. One day I was sitting at work writhing in pain with Pandora on and this song came on. It’s a classic so I’ve heard it before but I never seriously listened to it. It wasn’t Wilson’s lyrics (which are uplifting) but the melody, the trumpets, and whatever other instruments are playing that did something to my ovaries.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0b8Agb-3DhI
“Eye of The Tiger” by Survivor: It’s no secret that I’m a Rocky fan. This is my anthem; the anthem of survivors everywhere. As I’ve said before, all of my Rocky’s opponents are like my various diseases. Apollo is my Bipolar II. Mr. T is my (recovering) asthma. Drago is my PCOS. And finally Mason Dixon is my Myasthenia Gravis. The odds were always against Rocky; he was either less experienced, shorter than, or older than his opponents. But he never gave up. The other Rocky song I love is “Gonna Fly Now.” I have mash ups I created of my favorite Black Gospel and Rocky songs on my Daily Motivational Playlist. The first mash up is “Soon and Very Soon (We Are Going to See the King)” combined with “Eye of the Tiger.” And the second mash up is “Gonna Fly Now” with “His Eye is on the Sparrow,” which brings me to the final item on my list…
“His Eye is on the Sparrow” the Marvin Gaye version: My two favorite genres are Motown and Gospel music; Gaye’s rendition is the perfect intersection of both genres. There’s something about the African American church; so many of their songs are about having joy in suffering because of faith. There is something so honest and vulnerable about Gaye’s performance here. In the beginning of the song, Gaye cries out, Why should I be so discouraged? Why should the shadows come? The melody gradually changes as he finds hope, Since Jesus lives in me. Since Jesus is my portion! My constant friend is He. And then there is his joy in spite of it all, I sing because I’m happy. I sing because I’m free…This song anchored me in college with my bipolar disorder and PCOS. I managed to graduate from Northwestern University with two majors, and I won twenty titles for Northwestern University’s renowned Speech Team. Sometimes I don’t know how I did it. And spending so many days in pain, there are moments when I don’t know how I do it now. But then I hear this song and I tell myself: I don’t know HOW I’m going to get through the day but I know WHO is going to get me through the day.
And You?
What about you? How does music help you? What motivates, inspires, or strengthens you? Are there any songs that help you with pain? Stay tuned for tomorrow’s WEGO Prompt. #NHBPM.
–Your Stylist,
Jessica Gimeno
