Lately I’ve been thinking about how powerful music can be. The right song can uplift your mood, help you to feel better, evoke memories, or stop and make you think. There are many songs that I will listen to depending upon my mood.

“Blood on Blood” by Bon Jovi from their New Jersey album tells the story of three best friends who grew up, and grew apart. The lines towards the end:

“Through the years and miles between us
It’s been a long and lonely ride
But if I got a call in the dead of the night
I’d be right by your side”

Remind us that a true friend does not have to be someone to whom you speak every day, or even every week. A true friend is someone who is there for you no matter what.

“The Dance” by Garth Brooks from his Garth Brooks album holds a double meaning. It relates to the end of a relationship. That ending can be either due to the ending of a romantic relationship, or an ending due to death. The dance is a metaphor for the relationship, and the lines:

“And now I’m glad I didn’t know
The way it all would end
The way it all would go
Our lives are better left to chance
I could have missed the pain
But I’d have had to miss the dance”

Remind us that it does not matter why the relationship ends, it hurts. But to not partake in a relationship, for fear of the hurt that comes when it ends, means that you are avoiding life.

Kelly Clarkson is another artist who has written several songs that are incredibly moving. Her song “Piece by Piece” from her album Piece by Piece tells her story about being abandoned by her father, and her struggles through the years to come to piece with that abandonment, and then finally finding a source of healing when she met her husband and had her first child. And while her relationship with her husband did not succeed, it does not change the fundamental message of her song. The amount of long term emotional damage that a parent can inflict on a child

“He never walks away
He never asks for money
He takes care of me
He loves me
Piece by piece, he restored my faith
That a man can be kind and a father could stay”

Her absolutely gut-wrenching live performance on American Idol moves me to tears every time I see it.

The last song that I want to talk about is “Don’t Close Your Eyes’ by Kix from their Blow my Fuse album. Although this song was from Kix’s fourth album, and they released more albums after this one, the band qualifies as a One Hit Wonder, as this was their only song to break into the charts. This song deals with the subject of suicide, and takes the point of view of the person on the receiving end of a phone call from a friend who is looking to end their life. The lyrics deliberately leave it ambiguous as to whether the friend lived or died in the end:

“Hold on hold on tight
I’ll make everything all right
Wake up don’t go asleep
I’ll pray the lord
Your soul to keep”

With the phrasing of “I’ll pray the lord / Your soul to keep” the listener is left to wonder whether or not the friend is still alive by the ending of the song. As someone who has been on both sides of that type of phone call, it rips my soul to pieces every time I hear the song because of the emotional memories that it evokes. Having lost friends and family to every type of death: old age, disease, accident, suicide, and murder, I realized recently that I have been to more funerals for friends, than weddings for friends. When you receive that phone call, and I hope that you never do, you get to live a trolley problem, do I stay on the phone and try and help my friend, or do I hang up and call 911 to get my friend the help he truly needs, but knowing that if I hang up, I may cause him to act faster/harder. I have had friends and family take pills, sit on train tracks, jump in front of trucks, cut their wrists, and shoot themselves in the head. Some lived, some died. I have also had to call my friends and be the one on the other side of that phone call. Fortunately I am still here. I have had to severely narrow my list of friends, and I try to focus on my family, but some days are harder than others.

Recently I was officially diagnosed with both Epilepsy and C-PTSD, and whilst I believe that the Epilepsy is false, and the seizures are actually caused by my stress and anxiety levels it is yet another emotional burden that I get to carry. Music is a place to which I can escape, and find solace that there are others who are suffering the same types of emotional burdens that I carry. Thankfully I have some friends and family that help me to carry my load, but some days that load is more than I can carry alone.

To my friends, I will always be there for you. It does not matter whether we have spoken recently or whether it has been decades since we last spoke. If you are my friend, I will be there when you need me. In the last couple of years, there was a Facebook challenge to find your oldest friend, and I tracked down Lori to where she is living in New Zealand. I had not spoken to her in 45 years, but she is still my friend. As Bon Jovi said:

“Through the years and miles between us
It’s been a long and lonely ride
But if I got a call in the dead of the night
I’d be right by your side”

Everyday is its own challenge and none of us can get through without the help and support of friends. For those that you call friend, just remember what being a friend truly means.

As a parting song, Kelly Clarkson, singing Garth Brook’s “The Dance” as a tribute to Garth Brooks, is an excellent example of how the same song can evoke both the same and different emotions, at the same time, depending upon the mood of the person listening, in addition to the person who is singing.