‘A song you listen to when you’re angry.’
The thing is: I don’t really listen to music when I’m angry. I don’t get really, properly angry all that often. I get annoyed, but it’s like a summer squall: I’m annoyed for a while, really annoyed even, but it’s over quickly and forgotten almost at once. At work, I do a good pretence at anger when I have to, but I hardly ever mean it. When I get properly angry it denegerates quickly into sadness, upset, that feeling of being on the verge of tears but being just too stubborn to let it show. And when that happens, listening to music is the last thing on my mind.
What I should do, though, is precisely what the title suggests: listen to some music. I should listen to something soothing, calming, consoling. ‘Fred Jones Part 2’ by Ben Folds, maybe, or ‘Let it Be’ by The Beatles (incidentally the only Beatles song I really like, and yes, I know that’s almost sacrilege!). Those would help. Those would be the equivalent of a friend giving me a hug and telling me it was ok - ok to be upset, ok to be angry, that things would sort themselves out in the end.
Or maybe I could listen to something amusing - distracting, entertaining, and able to shake me out of my anger and upset. Maybe something with funny associations: ‘Reach for the Stars’ by S Club 7 (which would be something understood by anyone familiar with my workplace) or ‘Barbie Girl’ by Aqua, definitely in the category of a song so dreadful that it becomes a source of humour. Jedward, perhaps, and apt to mention them on the day when the jokes have been flying that the threat of a performance by the slightly disturbing pair, and not the threat of the cloud of volcanic ash from Iceland, was the real reason that Barack Obama left Ireland 12 hours ahead of schedule.
These things, these songs, would make me laugh myself out of my anger - not take myself so seriously - but I think what anger takes out of me would not be cured by such as them. What I’d need, instead, would be soothing. Calming. Reassurance. When you get angry - properly angry - you rage against the injustice of the world. The world shifts on its axis and becomes an unfair and disappointing place. You feel disillusioned, all at once: certain that things aren’t balanced as you thought, that right does not prevail after all, and that, just like you said when you were a child, it’s just not fair. You can distract yourself from feelings like this through humour or through superficial pleasure, but what you really need is to be reassured that actually: no. It’s not all bad. That justice and right and all the things you hold most dear can still prevail. It’s a bit like that small miracle that happens, when your world is in a mess and you’re bereft and frightened and despairing, and suddenly the person you least expected to be able to help you steps forward for a moment and makes it all all right, just briefly, when it matters most, with a kind word or a silent, gentle hug.
That’s the music you need when you’re angry: the music which will make you see the order in things again. Next time I feel like this, I’m going to search out a duet downloaded from a TV performance by Irish singers MayKay and Duke Special, of the song ‘I Think it’s Gonna Rain Today’. It’s a sad song - and those who know me will laugh and roll their eyes at my choice, as a weather obsessive, of a song whose lyrics revolve around pathetic fallacy and the weather - but somehow one which is full of acceptance of bad things. Bad things will happen. We accept and recognise them and look forward to better things coming afterwards. It will rain today but maybe tomorrow will be brighter. Or the next day. And that’s all right, because that’s what life is like. And next time I feel angry, or am in the terrible low aftermath of anger - proper anger - I hope I can retain the presence of mind to search out that song and listen to it again and remind myself that things will be all right. Because for all its negative imagery of rain and scarecrows and friends being betrayed like tin cans being kicked, the song does mention, a few times, that human kindness is overflowing.
And when you’re angry, or when you’re in the terrible despair that anger can provoke, that loss of faith in human nature, that’s when you most need to be reminded that human beings can, after all, be kind and good and thoughtful as well as hurtful, infuriating, cruel.
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