A few weeks ago I recorded a podcast with Manoj Dias, who is launching Gentle Noise this September, and he warned me ahead of time that he was going to end our conversation by asking me a question he asks everyone: what song has spiritual meaning for you.
I appreciated the warning, because I needed it. If I had gotten that question out of the blue I might have panicked because I don’t really consider myself a music person. I know, that sounds dumb, but I don’t really think I listen to music the way others do. I don’t go to concerts, and it’s not just because I don’t want to stay up late (but also, I don’t want to stay up late!). I also don’t like loudness. Even when I workout its to the same 90s workout mix my streaming account has decided I want, and I never change it. That’s the extent of my relationship to music most days. It is background. I listen passively, not deeply.
But having the time to think about Manoj’s question made me realize saying I’m not much of a music person isn’t quite right either. That workout playlist gets me amped up for a lift. Sometimes I put on something specific for a drive home when I need to relax or alternatively, stay awake. I definitely had a song (shout out Alanis Morissette’s You Oughta Know) that I played on repeat after a college breakup because it was the only thing that seemed to express what I was feeling. So it’s not that I don’t listen to music, I just haven’t thought much about it.
And when I did have time to think about it, while I chewed on Manoj’s question, I came up with something. What song has spiritual meaning for me? “Carolina on My Mind,” by James Taylor.
But not for perhaps the obvious reasons. I was born in North Carolina. My daughter was born in North Carolina too, and we lived there for the first four years of her life. There could be a reason for selecting that song that leans into nostalgia, or a sense of home, a song about the state where two generations of my life started. I could have given Manoj that answer and it would have been true enough to pass.
It’s not the real answer.
After my father died, three years ago this month, my sister made a playlist, on Spotify, of songs that reminded her of him. I played that mix constantly in the weeks after he passed. I love all the songs she included, but “Carolina on My Mind” is the one that creates a physical response every time. I feel it in my nose first, then I’m tearing up. Every time.
And it is not about the lyrics. I want to be clear about that, because it would be easy to construct a tidy story about the meaning of the lyrics and the state of North Carolina if I wanted to. But that’s not what’s happening when the song comes on. What’s happening is something closer to a physical event. When I hear that song my body remembers by dad before my brain does. If I want to grieve on purpose, if I want to try to pull him close instead of letting the pain of missing him dull into something more manageable, I put on that mix. Specifically that song.
I’ve spent a fair amount of time, professionally, thinking about why sound effects people and how religious traditions encourage and teach deep listening skills. I did an intense 36-hour sound bath tour of NYC for a chapter of Beyond Wellness, and a deep dive into how the Sikh sacred text isn’t just scripture, it’s a songbook, organized around dozens of distinct musical moods. Not all of them are the moods you’d might willing choose. One is associated with comfort and security, which is the kind of thing you’d want from a spiritual acoustic experience. But another is the sorrow of separation. Another with something closer to panic and regret. The tradition doesn’t treat those emotions as obstacles to well-being. It treats them as part of what well-being requires, if you’re going to be honest about what a full human life contains. All the vibes, not just the good ones.
So when Manoj asked me his question I had already written about the role of deep listening and well-being in other people’s religious traditions. I had not, until Manoj asked me his question, considered that I had already built my own version of it. A way to use sound to access grief because it is the best way I have back to my dad.
That’s the thing about researching a topic for a book. You can understand an idea completely and still not recognize it when it’s happening to you.
And I think the Manoj’s question came from a different direction even more recently (and I missed it entirely, again!).
I did a book talk at Brookline Booksmith earlier this month, on a day so hot it should have kept people home. We’d had over sixty RSVPs. I’d guess thirty-five people actually showed up, because that is what a ninety-plus-degree afternoon does to RSVP lists! About half of people who came already knew me, which was so sweet.
My friend Pamela asked me something during the Q&A that I didn’t answer well in the moment. She works in geriatric care. She told me she knows the research: people who are religious, people who pray, people who believe in a higher power, they tend to be healthier and live longer. Then she asked, so what does that mean for someone like her? “I’m not religious. I don’t believe any of that.”
I gave her some hedging non-answer at the time. I’ve been annoyed at myself about it since, because I know Pamela’s family, and I know they care enormously about the arts, and specifically about music. They’d invited us, at one point, to a lovely annual chamber music thing they host at their home. Pamela has a practice of deep listening.
Now that I’ve had time to think more about it, here’s what I wish I’d said to her. The research she was citing isn’t only measuring belief. It’s measuring people who have a reliable practice of feeling something bigger than themselves on purpose, often with other people. Prayer does that. So does a congregation singing together. But so does a family that has organized real chunks of its life around chamber music, around showing up for it, around taking it seriously enough to build evenings around it. I don’t think that is simply a metaphor for spiritual practice, it might actually be one, at least one that is reimagined. What I should have told Pamela is that she may already be doing her own version of the thing the research is tracking.
I think that’s the same answer I should give about how I listen to Carolina on My Mind. It is a spiritual practice, a religious one.
I’ve written before about how itchy I get around the word spirituality. It feels loose to me. A little woo-hoo. I might be in the minority of folks with no religious affiliation, but I’m actually drawn instead to the seriousness I find in actual religious traditions, the parts that ask something of you, that come with structure and cost and history, not just a feeling you’re chasing. I don’t think that itchiness has gone away. But sound might be the one place I’ll concede the category without a fight. Not because I’ve become convinced that vibrations are mystical. Because I also spiritual seems a good a word as any to describe what I experience, reliably, every time I hear that song.
My dad is gone. I can’t call him. I can’t ask him for advice, or share a funny story with him. But I can put on that mix, and for about three minutes I get a little of him back.
If you’re the kind of person who finds a question like this fun to think about, what song has spiritual meaning for you? How does that song effect you and do you know why? I did a whole chapter in Beyond Wellness on sacred sound and deep listening—sound baths, Sikh devotional music, why most of us have gotten so bad at listening to anything on purpose—if you want more than I can give you here. It’s in stores now, link below.
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