loops.

the cycle of addiction 

the structure of a song 

the songs we replay to bring ourselves back 

chest tight, mind in a cloud. having barely parted ways with whatever complicated issue dominated my dreamscape i remember waking up in a bit of a panic, for reasons i didn’t fully understand. it wasn’t the first time. i wake up like that more often than i’d like, but usually i can knot the idea around whatever weight sank in my heart hours, days, weeks before. i’m out of propranolol — great. late for the 20 steps i need to take to my computer, knowing i have no biological inhibitor to shut this feeling down.

since beginning to intentionally explore my relationship with music, one of the questions i ask myself often is how i can employ its powers. how it can morph from an experience to a tool. my mind auto tuned to a song i associate with anxiety. 

alexa — play “anxiety”. instead of the comforting song from my memory playing, this song comes on. 

“this will do”, i note, and focus on breathing. four repeats in, my chest loosened a bit. what is it about the cyclical nature of repeating a song that we find soothing? 

i then launch into whatever next songs would come to mind that i thought could fill me with a sense of empowerment; songs i had ironically listed to a friend for a music related exercise she was planning the night before. they helped — some. still anxious but more aligned with my inner self, i continued on. more hurdles flooded my day, more sprawling out on the couch in between projects in attempts to clear my head. during one such moment, i remember my therapist saying to me “you’ve been here before” days earlier. “maybe it makes sense that you don’t feel much about it.”

the context was completely different. she was remarking in the face of a re-emerging family dynamic. one i feared would grip my focus for eternity, but that i now found fading in its effects on me. it took a lot of repeats for it to finally subside. thirty years spent replaying the same song. it mirrored my earlier anxiety in that way. 

are the loops in a song, in a repeated chorus, really that dissimilar to behavioral loops we find ourselves in for hours, days, weeks? two sides of a sharpened blade, i have wielded both concepts in unison, using one edge to blunt the other. hearing the song again somehow shaved down the impact of the anxious cycles in my mind.  the structure of a song within itself is a cycle. verse chorus, repeat. divert with a bridge, but then bring it back to itself. a construct we all agreed upon centuries ago. 

i’ve played songs so repeatedly that i cannot hear them anymore. what brought me euphoric release eventually processes down into an auto function. ‘i’ve been here before’, my brain remarked. maybe it makes sense that i don’t feel anything. there’s a bit of triumph, however, in understanding that no emotional state is permanent. they are all eventually transmuted. 

there is something about music as therapy that mimics the structures of our lives. there’s relief in being able to take advantage of this similarity as a coping mechanism, a path home again. the intentionality of the song selection, the repeated refrains, the small divergences. the big divergences to shift the tone. free styling, riffing. set a new course for yourself. then meld it into a rhythm again. a repetition that can blunt and build.