If Florence Nightingale Were a DJ

My penchant for composing playlists began as a tenderized response to a kindred of mine, being subjected to medical treatment that was more akin to torture than the relief of healing. To remedy the necessary brutality of such measures set to the tune of sheer survival, what could I do but offer an aural balsam to augment the sunken reality for better. Songs for floating in the body to the shores of transcendence, because good music can carry one through anything. It is right and just to insist on a soundtrack to life, as the potential for music to take one up, above, and beyond can be spun into any moment, no matter how bleak. Inevitably, the power of music to activate all parts of your brain can transcend the threatening cage of a dark mood. Let music in and override the circuits bound for negativity with the sweet shock of beats and serenade your waves with sound, made electric, made light.

Now what does music do but allow you lean in fully to the emotion, to the point where you can experience new states of being, some which transgress language. Or if you’re open, to physically feel its effects. My pet name for writing is “pulling thorns” and is a form of extraction whereas listening to music is a form of reception. It is the anointed oil poured in the opened fresh, ceasing bleeding, singing your wounds a lullaby. What wonders when you allow the invisible sound to physically move you, take you places. The emotion of music must be real and it must be deep to go deep, so as to meet the end of your wounds, bring closure. Something of a miracle-worker, it is.

No one need feel inferior for being forced horizontal due to malady, as one can be stationery and still travel. Just like being given dreams of flying, you already know the spirit cannot be confined. Put on the wings of headphones and soar steep, where there is no danger of falling or bodily harm. It can take time and an astute sense of hunt to retrieve songs capable of this, but being something of an intrepid hunter-healer, tracking down soundtracks to help one rise from the wretched is a remedy I enjoy sourcing and making. This vast library of music, my pharmacopeia of delights, where I mix and pair these auditory gems as beautiful as nature itself in order to concoct the antidote to despair.

Trust I’ve poured the remedy into my own ears first, and that I’ll leave you notes for consumption. The gentle feminine is given to this set list, instrumental and vocal sirens that bring not peril but safe embrace. Do you not like music to feel like a warm blanket weaved by angels and rested on you? The ladies have a knack for such knitting. Never one to be myopic, the gentle of men is taken and given here too, a complimentary craft for a comprehensive kind of palliative duet. Such gentle comes in easy to the ears, where peace makes haste to stay. A collection true to Nightingale’s namesake, like a lamp held by benevolence herself, making her way to your bedside.

What I place before you is heavy on the ethereal, and at times, a likely provocation for the psyche into a state of life lived on vivid, followed by the hush of catharsis. An acoustic curation with unashamed saxophone sensuality, with trumpets to call the tremor of heaven to your true. Clever percussion that ultimately, obliterates the distinction between sacred and profane. The inclusion of voices inherited to human throats by the original parent of harmony, capable of speaking to our inner supreme. A bit of posh perfection with erudite classics posted for good measure to remind of the reward that comes from the fortitude of practice, a virtue wisely invited to any endeavor. A playlist with gorgeous washings of synthesized sound and beats to add pulse to our dreams in need of life.

Need I say more, or is it time to cue up the soundtrack to blast off from suffering to the galaxy of calm hope. Come with me my passenger, take my soft hand and press play.