Music should provide us with “an emotional toolbox” to which we can turn at different moments of our lives, locating songs to recover, guide and sublimate our feelings.
Yesterday I heard that the teenage child of someone I know well back home in Cayman just committed suicide. No words.
And yet… I was also reminded yesterday of an article by Alain de Botton in The Guardian back in 2016: “What’s the point of music? Ask Peter Gabriel“, where one of the key points made by Peter is that “music should, to quote his distinctive formulation, provide us with “an emotional toolbox” to which we can turn at different moments of our lives, locating songs to recover, guide and sublimate our feelings.”
One of my favourite albums is “Up“, released by Peter Gabriel back in 2002. From the beginnings of Genesis over thirty years prior, he had always studied, learned, grown, stretched his knowledge and understanding of music, with “Up” being one more wondrous moment on that journey. As it does for me, for Alain one of the songs from Up stands out in this, “I Grieve”. In his article, he notes that Peter wrote it; “driven by a wish to create a song that would help people with the mourning process. The song has gone on to become a standard at many funeral services, a part of our informal collective secular liturgy. The reason is that the song both knows how to release our sadness and yet also channels and contains it. It creates perfect conditions for a catharsis.“
I wish for that family in Cayman all the love in the world from family and community in their grieving process, and as I write this I listen once more to “I Grieve” as I think of them. This song is beautiful and I have found it supportive at times of loss in the last twenty years since it was released.
In closing, my mind also goes to the way funerals are conducted in the Caribbean, where in Cayman and Jamaica I have attended a number and marvelled at the way the pastor or minister manages the flow of energy from deep and dark grief through to catharsis and celebration of life. THat Caribbean way with death is also a powerful part of the emotional toolbox when we lose someone, so I am happy for that family that they will have that experience in Cayman and that community and family will surround them.
Nothing more for today.