Medicine as music

Some amusing reflections on music and medicine

You’ve probably heard of music as medicine, but did you know that there’s medicine in music as well? Songs such as Bad medicine, Stayin’ Alive or Stitches immediately spring to mind… Of course, there are many other, less obvious choices as well. Here’s a small selection to satisfy your tastes.

Cage the Elephant – Cold Cold Cold | Fleetwood Mac – Man of the World ‘Doctor, look into my eyes,’ so begins Cold Cold Cold. Matthew Schulz’ lyrics urge you to look inside, where it’s ‘darker in the day than the dead of night’. During an interview with HMV, Schulz explained that the song is a metaphor for ‘this feeling of imminent doom and seasonal depression.’ Although Cold Cold Cold captures some of the dread and despair that often accompanies depression, it does so in a more straightforward, mocking, but less artful way than, say, Peter Green’s Man of the World. Green’s masterpiece has always struck me as one of the most excruciatingly beautiful expressions of despair in modern pop music. Unfortunately, Man of the World marks the beginning of a period of serious mental decline for Green, as was also noticed by his bandmates. His use of LSD was followed by a period of messianic tendencies. Eventually, Green would be diagnosed with schizophrenia, a disease from which he never fully recovered.

Neil Young – The Needle and the Damage Done A song about heroin addiction. Neil Young saw firsthand what heroin could do to his former Crazy Horse bandmate Danny Whitten: ‘I hit the city and / I lost my band / I watched the needle / Take another man / Gone, gone, the damage done.’ After having been kicked out of Crazy Horse, Whitten was invited by Young to rejoin the rehearsals for Young’s upcoming album Harvest. Unfortunately, Whitten’s guitar skills had taken a severe beating from his heroin addiction – the damage was done. Young fired Whitten, and the very same evening Whitten died from a fatal interaction of diazepam and alcohol. ‘Every junkie’s like a setting sun’. There’s no up, only down, down all the way to rock bottom and beyond, beyond where nothing lies.

Sufjan Stevens – Carrie and Lowell Carrie and Lowell is a deeply touching and reflective album, written by arguably the finest contemporary singer-songwriter. It was inspired by the death of Steven’s mother Carrie, someone with whom Stevens always had had a complicated relationship (alcohol, depression, schizophrenia, abandonment). Carrie and Lowell is an album about grief, coping, and attempts at reconciliation with someone dear but dearly lost, as well as an attempt at closure. Closure which Stevens never found while writing the album. In fact, during the process Stevens fell deeper and deeper into misery and into a whole host of self-destructive behaviors of his own. The result, however, was like blood on the tracks, a true, honest-to-god, heartfelt masterpiece that will remain eminently relatable to all of those going through a period of heart-wrenching grief of their own. As Stevens sings, ‘there’s no shade in the shadow of the cross.’

Ludwig van Beethoven – Heiliger Dankgesang eines Genesenen an die Gottheit, in der Lydischen Tonart On a lighter note… The Holy Thanksgiving of a Convalescent to the Divinity is the third and central movement of Beethoven’s brilliant String Quartet No. 15. Beethoven wrote this heavenly piece in 1825, after having lived through an extensive period of recovery following a severe and possibly fatal gastrointestinal infection. Immediately from the movement’s opening bars, one senses its peacefulness, its accepting and grateful mood. This, we feel, is what it must be like to be in convalescence - a profound state of self-transformation that invariably follows such dreadful head-on collisions with existence at large. It is characterized by resolution and redemption, by reawakening and rebirth. The Heiliger Dankgesang attests to the almost magic ability of music to transport us into phenomenal states utterly alien to our own. This, in turn, may help us to become more empathetic, understanding and less ego-reclusive people. Reachng higher states of interpersonal awareness, music, or art in general, may therefore aid us growing into ever more competent physicians as well.