For Sara D - For Trying Times and the Better Days to Come
Dear Real Sound Advice
Life is a bit crazy right now. Lots of anxiety from the pandemic. Feeling antisocial and have utterly lost faith in a lot of humans.
Work is full of frustration with micromanaging of work with fewer and fewer moments of joy. All while being underpaid since it’s a government job. Good for job security?
Happily married to my best friend. Wish we could fulfill our dreams of traveling right now. Also looking forward to continuing to enjoy our married life together without kids; a mutual agreement.
Mom is a fighter and still maintaining her independence and mental strength going into year 3 of her stage IV cancer diagnosis. I feel like I can do more for her but she doesn’t need/want so much help. I’m still searching for closure after my father’s suicide in 2020.
In the end, I’m trying to balance being safe (protect mom and ourselves from COVID) with having fun to alleviate stress. Sometimes going out causes more stress (uncontrolled environments and unknowns) and I’m left feeling like a snake eating its own tail.
Why These Songs Are Here
Dear Sara,
Thank you for writing in and telling us what’s going on in your life. We’re right there with you when it comes to the mixed bag of feelings the pandemic has thrown at us. In some ways, it’s hard to remember how to actually be social or reintroduce one’s self back into the world, which of course comes with a heaping helping of anxiety and frustration. We hope these tunes aid in the soothing of those feelings, if only for a moment, and that they’ll be something you can share and enjoy with your best friend and spouse.
The first song on here is “Things To Do While Waiting For The Apocalypse” by Holy Sons. It kinda says it all in the title. The last two years have felt like such a strange waiting game. We’ve all been waiting around to see how the world decides to sort itself out, and we’ve just been left in the wings to deal with whatever the outcome turns out to be. The song has a tense vibe while also being a bit poppy. To continue with this theme, we have “The Uncertainty Principle” by The Heliocentrics. The song has a killer groove, but it also relates to feelings of anxiety and uncertainty (as the title implies).
This leads us into “This Fucking Job” by Drive-By Truckers. Jobs suck. They also seem to have gotten worse as a result of the pandemic. It’s difficult to feel fulfilled by what you do when the people you do it for don’t appreciate it. As the song goes, “working this job is a kick in the pants. Working this job is like a knife in the back.”
“Make It Stop” by Moaning is next. We know we’ve yelled those words out into the void over the last year or two, and the saying “when it rains, it pours” has very much been on our minds. The world can sometimes show no sympathy and times really have been tough. We here at RSA are so sorry for your loss. It’s in these times that we can find a strange strength and a surprising resolve in retaliation to the challenges put before us. That would lead us to the next song on the list, a new one by the band SPICE, entitled “Recovery.” As we each make our way on our respective paths, we can find ways to walk taller and move with more determination as we recover from what’s happened to us on the road behind. It’s important to find ways to heal, both for ourselves and for the people we surround ourselves with. “You have to get out of bed and it’s hard.” Coming out of that, we have “Hold On Magnolia” by Songs: Ohia. It’s a beautiful song and it’s on here to encourage you to keep hanging on.
Next, a little different than the others in this bunch is “No Kids” by Marvin Pontiac. We thought the song illustrated your relationship with your partner and mutually agreeing to not have children; it also touches on the difficult circumstances your mother is dealing with, which you’re dealing with as well as someone close to her and there for her. It must be so tough.
The remainder of the playlist reflects your relationship with your spouse, whom you lovingly refer to as your best friend. The first song in this stretch is “It’s Real” by Real Estate. You know that whatever you’re doing or whenever you’re together, it’s the real deal. Following this is “On Our Own” by The Meeting Places, which we find to be a really great love song that evokes a lot of feelings of having fun with one’s partner. The shimmering shoegaze fuzzy guitar and poppy, upbeat tempo make us think of exploring new places with that special someone and having new adventures. The lyrics also really describe a relationship where the couple truly “get” each other and see each other for who they are. Another good song to go with this theme comes next. It’s “I’m Sticking With You” by The Velvet Underground (one of our favorites here at RSA), another song about loving and feeling secure and whole in your relationship. Finally, it’s a beachy, power-pop love song by Best Coast, “When I’m With You.” Living in these wildly chaotic and uncertain times of Covid and climate crisis and political discourse and you name it, sometimes we have that person who makes it all disappear and you’re able to have a great time. Whether it’s going out and exploring new places or just laying around being lazy together, that kind of partnership is such a great thing and can add so much to our lives.
Sara, these are the craziest of times. Along with this playlist, we send you our most sincere sympathies for your loss and the troubles your mother is going through. We hope there is still room for rest, still room for peace, and still room for adventure. We hope these songs prove to be effective reminders of that, and we hope you enjoy them.