Are Love Lyrics Bad for Your Mental Health?
Opera - (and the Hollies) - Part Two
I love so many different types of music with opera at the bottom and Afro-Cuban Jazz and the Blues being at the top. I did come of age during Zappa’s hit “Valley Girl” in high school and went on to respect his work ethic and intellect. I remember his autobiography as being a fantastic read and this quote from Frank Zappa hit me and stuck:
“I hate love songs. I think one of the reasons for the bad mental health condition of the US is that people grow up listening to love songs.” FZ
I was married at 21 and divorced by 22, so when I read this, I agreed wholeheartedly, and you have to admit, there are some pretty ridiculous love song lyrics out there from pop to opera to blues and back again. TBH, this is the beginning of my “no lyrics” phases in which I played only Miles Davis, Dexter Gordon, Oscar Petersen. These were all albums on turntables because CDs were still new and weird and hadn’t taken over yet. From there I was introduced to Cole Porter via “Red, Hot & Blue” with artists like U2, David Byrne, Neneh Cherry, etc doing tribute. But see, Cole Porter’s love songs are smart and funny and real, and I found I could never go back.
Plus, as I grew in experience and wisdom, I learned how love bombing, controlling for love, loving others insincerely, or even as a power grab and being a dumb-dumb in your attachment can really become a huge obstacle. So, young people falling in love and navigating relationships, you’re doing important work! Love songs don’t have to be bad for your mental health if you understand they are passing expressions of temporary madness!
Here I am at 21, wondrously innocent, naive and clueless. A year later, I would know a lot I never wanted to learn… my own personal “silent” opera kind of like a “silent” disco! Ha!
Post my “juvenile” divorce, a radio ear worm like “Air That I Breathe” by the Hollies, would instinctively make me snap off the radio so hard the knob would vibrate. Today, I think - what a great melody!!! Where’s a karaoke bar at?? Of course, it’s sometimes. “Sometimes, all I need is the air that I breathe and to love you.” Ok, sure! Just like, sometimes, all I need is this bite of SEES dark chocolate caramel and to love you. Just enjoy and take things easy.
Still, I am sensitive - BORN THIS WAY - and I have to be careful with my heart and body. Plus, I’m pretty obsessed with cleanliness and not having to do panicky trips to Kaiser Lab.
Recently I reread hundreds of letters that I had received and and also many copies of ones I had sent over a significant chunk of a lifetime, from like 22-42. In addition to a crazy number of long long letters between me and half a dozen girlfriends and another half a dozen family members, there were love letters from more men than I remembered. A strange thing really, and I wondered if people of the future are going to miss out because it’s not the same to sort through texts and emails.
You heard it here, if you want to write a love letter, good ‘ol paper is still best!
A few of these passionate missives were part of real, important relationships the memory of which I will always treasure and appreciate; others were unrequited - including the invitation from the couple on the floor above me when I lived off Phahonyotin - Soi 8 in Bangkok, to join them for a threesome. I never did lay eyes on them although their letter of two typed pages of was equally hilarious and disturbing. Let’s just say I looked over my shoulder in the stairwells for quite awhile…
I still have that letter and maybe I’ll reprint it here in a future Substack - how fun!
Some of the language in those love letters I received, even at the time, I couldn’t take seriously, because of my earlier marriage and divorce. Good thing, because these over the top letters from my vantage point now seem like of like a bullshit template. In this way, the early divorce allowed me to avoid other mistakes. And indeed, I got to know some of the guys who wrote those letters and they were kind of flakey and even opportunistic.
Growing up in New Jersey in the 70s, I think my BS barometer was honed at least a little by coming of age in a neighborhood of Italian boys where it was perfectly acceptable to say, “What are you, stoopit??” The thing about flinging that around a lot - especially being on the receiving end - is that you begin to really think about things. You pause and ask yourself, “Am I being stoopit??" I found that very helpful if a bit tactless.
What does this have to do with OPERA you might be asking by now!
Seeing Verdi’s “A Masked Ball” a couple weeks ago got me thinking. Isn’t it quite silly the way people - grown people - fling themselves about on stage in the throes of ecstasy over romantic love singing their hearts out in complicated convoluted plots that usually end in death by sword or poison. We witness the lone lover tramping through a dark forest of despair crying for a love that is misunderstood, misrepresented, misaligned or just plain missing… before someone dies by sword or poison. Death is always lingering nearby. Love and death - entwined, dramatic, emotionally-charged and welcome nowhere else but on the stage or behind closed doors or in a sports arena.
Try crying out your pain of the blood and mud in public on the sidewalk. That doesn’t work at all. Even close friends have their limits. “Beth, have you thought of therapy?” You can get shushed for laughing too loud in a restaurant. We gotta be tamped down to be normal and then sit in an audience to watch other people scream out and soar. Okay to laugh as a group and cry silently into our hankies. When you think about how a life well-lived is supposed to be open and free, we actually do define and refine and distill it down within quite narrow strictures. Forget tolerance for a crying child, even children laughing on a playground is too much noise for a lot of people.
In high school, I was steeped in Russian literature, reading multiple prisoner of war memoirs and epic novels of war and love with desperately sad endings. I was in full-on vicarious suffering mode. Is this what happened to girls before cell phones and Title 9??? Besides all my letters, I found I still have my paper on Anna Karenina written in 11th grade. In it, I ponder nihilism - FFS!
I wonder, after a lifetime of pursuing my bliss and feeling deeply, have I become numb to both soaring love and desperate tragedy? Do I ever think of my first, brief marriage? No, I really don’t. All that suffering and feeling was processed and put away like those letters I barely remember.
Isn’t a certain resigned fatalism about your life and death and loves - “It is what it is” - quite a comfort for everyone involved? Have I reached the age where I have no f-cks to give, as many people are fond of saying now? Am I just tired? Are you? Do I need another night on the town, sitting at my neighborhood piano bar, listening and nodding and feeling things? Probably. You can never get enough of piano bars…
Going to the opera got me thinking about what I’m allowing myself to feel and the comfort I find in not feeling… and the work involved in sorting through it all.
I also know that when I get to that place of feeling deep things via music, I can have an experience that makes me cry and it does feel like a cleanse and yes, I need that like the air that I breathe… sometimes.
THREE TREASURES CORNER! YOUR THREE TREASURES BEING YOUR BODY, MIND & SPIRIT
In keeping with the theme here, the three treasures corner today is about what happens when you have an amygdala activation. That lima bean-sized part of your brain that processes your emotions and secretes hormones that affect your whole body. These can be stress-filled hormones or good-feeling hormones depending on your experience.
With chronic stress, your amygdala can actually change size - shrinking and becoming calcified in its stress-filled signals… There are many things we can do to help regulate our amygdala function and big surprise, it’s the same ol’, same ‘ol - healthy diet, good sleep, hydration, deep breathing, meditation and feelings of connection.
Still, if you are accustomed to tuning into your body’s signals, you can really feel an amygdala activation. It might be your gut, your heart, your breathing, your fingers and toes - or all of the above and more. Sometimes, it’s enough to just witness the workings of your own body knowing that it’s emanating from your mind and your mind is operating from the stories you tell it. Maya Angelou said something to the effect of, If you don’t like something, change it, if you can’t change it, change the way you think about it. When you are feeling emotional pain - literally in your body - make space for that, honor it, cope with it in tiny increments and, as they say, turn it into purpose.
But the first step is always to feel it.