Songs To Go To Chemo By

Jump to Comments

Here’s what I want: Songs of healing, renewal, hope, moving forward, embracing life. Songs about how things will be alright once again soon. Songs about getting through. Songs to hang on to by my fingernails if need be. Songs to stand on firm ground.

What I don’t want: Sad songs, songs about loss or death, anything loud, raucous, saccharine or trite. Heartfelt is great, cliched or overplayed is not.

When I’m not feeling well I need to be soothed. Calmed. Centered. Reminded that this present misery is not everything that is.

So here are a few that I had in mind (it’s just a start, definitely needs a little help, needs to be a little more upbeat perhaps? – send your ideas on in):

Promise of the Sun – Alice diMicele, Ebb & Flow. Not a fighting song, more of a moving on song, an anthem of sorts: “May I be kindness. May I be patience and hope. May I be healing. Even my enemies I will give my love.”

Whitw Light – Wilco, Sky Blue Sky – “It’s ok to be frightened, there’s light, white light inside of you”

Down In The River To Pray – Alison Krauss, O Brother Where Art Thou, “Oh Lord, show me the way….”

Amen Omen – Ben Harper, Diamonds on the Inside, “between the darkness and the dawn”

Say a Little Prayer – Shawn Colvin, Going Driftless, “Let her get better please do….Put Aretha Franklin on in the middle of the night, because that’ll do more good than any medicine could”

Ella Mae – Pieta, Zoe and Constie Brown, from Going Driftless (just a pretty song)

One day I walk – Bruce Cockburn (a favorite childhood song)

Elvis Presley Blues – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Time the Revelator “he shook it like a chorus girl, like a midnight rambler, like you never seen”

I Want To Sing That Rock-n-roll – Gillian Welch & David Rawlings, Time the Revelator

Love You – Free Design, from the end of the credits of Stranger than Fiction

When it’s good – Ben Harper, Diamonds on the Inside

Blessed to be a witness – Ben Harper, Diamonds on the Inside” I am blessed…”

Lullaby – Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way “How long do you want to be loved”

I hope – Dixie Chicks, Taking the Long Way

Go it alone – Beck, Guero

Ooh child – Beth Orton, The Other Side of Daybreak, “Things are going to get easier”

Maybes:
Black Tamborine – Beck, Guero “my tamborine is still shaking”

Some Jack Johnson

Some Paul Simon

New Orleans Instrumental No.1 – REM, Automatic for the People

Flours – Britt Daniel/Brian Reitzell, from Stranger than Fiction

Landslide – Dixie Chicks (from a favorite childhood song by Stevie Nicks)

Don’t Panic – Coldplay

4 Comments

Filed under chemo, quality of life