“Fear – fear’s a powerful thing. I mean, it’s got a lot of firepower. If you can figure out how to wrestle that fear to push you from behind rather than stand in front of you, that’s very powerful. I always felt that I had to work harder than the next guy, just to do as well as the next guy. And to do better than the next guy, I had to just kill. And you know, to some extent that’s still with me in how I work. I just. ..go in.”
-Jimmy Iovine, Intro to “All In a Day’s Work” by Dr. Dre
Spend 30 seconds on this blog and you will discover that I am about as white as they come. As a white girl, I grew up with a certain amount of privilege. My childhood was rather free of adversity and, consequentially, gangsta rap. It wasn’t until my 20s when I was introduced to the world of chronic migraines that I began to understand the power of music and words.
I have had many sick, sad days during the past three years, thanks to the far-reaching effects of chronic illness. Migraines impact my career, my relationships, my appearance, my bank account, my home, my hobbies, and my dreams. Pain and nausea ebb and flow through my days, keeping me forever humble.
“It takes a special kind of motherf***a to live like this” Anderson .Paak raps on Dr. Dre’s superb track “All In a Day’s Work.” I couldn’t agree more, Anderson. Obviously, my chronic migraine life looks a lot different from Dr. Dre’s. The challenges that I face are worlds apart from the ones he overcame as a black music producer from Compton. The kind of self-assured anger that Dr. Dre’s music, and other music, feeds off of is exactly what I need, however, to get through my days of pain with strength.
The Power of Music
“One good thing about music, when it hits you you feel no pain.” -Bob Marley
Spend enough days in bed and you start to look at your interests as little life rafts. When dealing with chronic illness, you spend your entire days listening – to your breath, to your pain, to your symptoms, to your body. When it’s time to engage in leisure activities, like reading or listening to music, it’s difficult to turn off that longing. It’s difficult to turn off that effort to seek, to constantly strive for answers.
If you’re like me, you may find yourself clinging to words, finding little bits of yourself and small morsels of wisdom in art that make your life more bearable. That is the power of music. That is power of art. Like in life, in music you discover only what you seek.
I don’t pretend to understand the life of Dr. Dre or presume that he and I are similar. I don’t affirm that gangsta rap is the only kind of music that embodies a powerful anger. Beyonce’s album Lemonade, Pale Hound’s Dry Food, some folk by Bob Dylan and Joni Mitchell, modern folk band The Staves, and even pop goddess Taylor Swift let anger guide their art from time to time. And their music is more real because of it.
Expressing anger in art or music is a powerful step towards releasing its control over your thoughts and actions. Anger is natural part of the grieving process that everyone with chronic pain encounters. Expressing it through art releases its hold before it has a chance to turn into bitterness or despair.
Make Art. Conquer Pain.
Listen. Look. Love. Sing. Create. Write.
You don’t have to show anyone. Buy a coloring book and some colored pencils online. Watch Bob Ross on Netflix and play around with watercolors. Journal or make a list. Creativity is a powerful way to heal, rest, and grow. It’s an old and simple concept, that I would like to believe is true – surround yourself with beauty, look at beautiful things, and you will start to notice the beauty in your own life. Pain begets pain – that continues to be a chronic illness truth. But so does beauty beget beauty.
The power of music can heal listeners. Those who create – those who sing, write, paint, dance – unleash the full power of art to not only heal but to set free.
The late Dr. Oliver Sacks wrote about the power of music in a 2006 edition of Brain: A Journal of Neurology. He wrote about how music helps people with different neurological conditions, like Parkinson’s disease and Tourette’s. He wrote about how music can bring people together and make people look within. The paper ends with a simple conclusion, “In the last 20 years, there have been huge advances here, but we have, as yet, scarcely touched the question of why music, for better or worse, has so much power. It is a question that goes to the heart of being human.”
Rise Above the Pain Playlist
(Not all tracks available on Spotify)
All in a Day’s Work by Dr. Dre
Formation by Beyonce
Bad Blood by Taylor Swift (Ft. Kendrick Lamaar)