Natie's Playlist Volume 1: HER DIAMONDS

Ever since I can remember, music has been a continual source of inspiration and comfort. The First Volume of my Playlist is a deeply personal selection of 12 Songs that communicate, both lyrically & visually, varying aspects of my numerous experiences with illness, hospitalization, near-death circumstance, loss, and recovery.

Each Song is dedicated to the people of Aurora, Colorado in the aftermath of the senseless theatre massacre that claimed 12 lives, and forever altered 59 others on Friday, July 20th, 2012.

*HER DIAMONDS (Rob Thomas)
Rob Thomas is, to me, one of the greatest contemporary songwriters. His lead single for the album "Cradle Song" (2009) tells of his wife's painful struggle with an auto-immune disease through the *window* of his helplessness to comfort her. Rob Thomas's wife, Marisol, sings backup vocals on the track, and helped produced the song's arrangement. This song evokes a vivid memory of my father tearfully confiding to the doctor that he felt helpless watching his little girl suffer.

 

*TITANIUM (Sia Furler)
Perhaps more than any of the other songs/videos, this track from the album "Nothing But the Beat" (2011) speaks both lyrically and visually to the tragic event in Aurora, Colorado.  The song's lyrics are about inner-strength and the unbreakable resilience of the human spirit in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. Brilliant vocalist Sia Furler, like Rob Thomas's wife, was diagnosed with an autoimmune disorder called "Graves Disease," in June 2010, and considered retiring permanently due to her ill health.  She is from Adelaide, Australia -- "Adelaide" was the name of the cabbage patch doll I was given at birth, and kept with me during my childhood hospitalizations.  More recently, I gave the name "Adelaide" to a 12 week old puppy rescued from a kill shelter and given to a family with a spacious backyard. 

 

*CRASH & BURN (Savage Garden)
Savage Garden is one of my favorite bands of all time!  In March 2000, I received their album "Affirmation" as a gift for my birthday.  Every track on the album is brilliant, and communicates positive messages about the preciousness of life and the importance of love.  I listened to the album's 3rd single, "Crash & Burn," on a constant loop while hospitalized for a serious internal bleed in November 2000.  Written by lead singer Darren Hayes and Guitarist Daniel Jones, also Australian musicians, the song is about the neccessity of communication and connection with others, which hit a particular chord with me during that extended period when I was cut off from most human interaction and powers of communication in the confines of the hospital room.  Listening to the song made me feel that even in my isolation, I was not alone. The video for the song features scenes of troubled youths interspersed with fantastical images, and a *glass window* separating Darren from a young girl trapped on the other side.

*YELLOW (Coldplay)
Coldplay is another of my all-time favorite bands, and I listened to this particular song from their album "Parachutes" (2000) during my extended hospitalizations in 2000 and 2003. The lyrics of the song, although written by Chris Martin during an experience with unrequited love, evoke the positive vision of the stars shining on a bright "Yellow" future in which "skin and bones, turn into something beautiful."  This image and the song's title relates to a vision I had in my night-lit room after a near-death experience when I was five years old.  Also, the final lines of the song reference "bleeding," which is what I was hospitalized for.  Finally, the song, like Savage Garden's "Crash & Burn," advocates the selfless act of composing a song as a positive means to channel pent-up feelings or emotions that otherwise cannot be expressed, which is instrumentally evoked through the driving guitar melody. The video is from Coldplay's performance of the song during their 2003 concert in Sydney, Australia. 

 *I NEED YOU (Leanne Rimes)
As a truly gifted singer, Leanne Rimes is one of the only "country" artists that I can appreciate.  Her song "I Need You" was released as part of the "Jesus: An Epic Miniseries" soundtrack on July 18, 2000.  The miniseries, starring Jeremy Sisto in the title role, aired on the night I was rushed to the hospital four months later.  Along with "The Nativity Story" (2006), this two-part cinematic interpretation of Jesus's life is particularly fascinating in its bold human portrayal of Christ and other biblical figures. The song itself is a spiritual ballad that speaks to the necessity of courage, love, and hope during trying times. 

*PERMANENT (David Cook)
David Cook won American Idol in the spring of 2008, the first season that I watched the show.  During that season, he not only composed and dedicated this moving song to his terminally-ill brother, Adam, he also wore -- and continues to wear -- an orange wristband to support a 7-year-old fan, Lindsey Rose, who had been suffering with leukemia.  The song's lyrics express David Cook's devastated feelings about Adam's long battle with brain cancer, before he finally succumbed to the disease in May 2009.  Since then, the song has become an anthem for the fight to eradicate the disease, and, more personally, for those who suffer with life-threatening illness/injuries of all sorts.

*ONE SONG, GLORY (Adam Pascal)
When I was 16 years old, I saw the Broadway musical "Rent" twice with my sister during a summer in New York.  Written by Jonathan Larson and based on Puccini's Opera "La Boheme," the musical tells the story of a group of impoverished young artists and musicians struggling to survive and create in New York's Lower East Side during the thriving days of Bohemian Alphabet City, under the shadow of HIV/AIDs.  Early in the production, the young artist, Roger (played by Adam Pascal), who has contracted the HIV virus from his drug-addicted girlfriend who recently died, climbs to the roof of his apartment and performs "a song that rings true -- truth like a blazing fire, an eternal flame" that he hopes will not be extinguished after "time dies."  These lyrics which describe the necessity to express oneself through the "glorious" composition of a song, and to record the experiences of this life before "the virus takes hold," deeply resonated with me, as I was in-between successive hospitalizations, related to the suffering of disease that Roger describes, and was inspired to share my experiences with life-threatening illness through storytelling.  Included here is Adam Pascal's performance of the song in the 2005 film adaptation directed by Chris Columbus.  

   

*MY IMMORTAL (Evanesence)
On December 8, 2003, Amy Lee and her band, Evanesence, released the elegiac and haunting album "Fallen," which I kept with me when I was rushed to the hospital later that month. In the emergency room, Dr. Gary Newman, took the CD away from me as he began to administer the anesthesia.  When he looked at the cover for the CD, which appears quite gothic, he asked me, "How can you listen to this dark and depressing music?"  Even as the anesthesia was beginning to take effect, I answered with conviction, "The songs are really good, and Amy Lee's voice is gorgeous and soothing, especially in the song called "My Immortal..."  I don't remember if I actually said anything after that, but I recall WANTING to also tell Dr. Newman how much I related to the lyrics of the song, which speak about unhealed wounds and pain, and about the lonely loss of someone whose "resonating light" and spirit lingers -- a notion that must also resonate profoundly with the people in Colorado who lost loved ones. Amy Lee composed the song with then band mate and boyfriend, Ben Moody, who was inspired by the haunting circumstances surrounding the death of his grandfather. Moody explained that "lyrically, the song talks about a spirit staying with you after its death and haunting you until you actually wish that the spirit were gone because it won't leave you alone."  The video for the song visually embodies Moody's description in that it shows Amy Lee as a pure disembodied spirit dressed in white, sitting and singing on various elevated spots, but never touching the ground...much like how I feel when experiencing a bleed and also when succumbing to anesthesia.

*DON'T CRY (Seal)
 Like many others, I was first introduced to Seal, a Nigerian singer who suffers from a type of lupus, when his self-titled album's 3rd single, "Kiss from a Rose" hit the airwaves as the theme song to the 1995 film Batman Forever -- the precursor to the Batman film franchise that became the setting for the tragic mass shooting in Aurora, Colorado. I remember listening to the song on the car stereo with my mother, who marveled at how unique and original Seal's composition and voice was.  While my mom loved "Kiss from a Rose," my favorite from the album was the final track, "Don't Cry," because the song tells an emotionally honest story about loneliness and suffering that begins, "When we were young, and truth was Paramount..." The speaker of the song holds on to past memories of "living life without any doubt" and  dreams of "friends (he) had before" while pleading with himself, or a loved one, not to cry or to feel alone.  I imagined this speaker to be the reassuring and soothing voice of my father, in the wake of his then recent passing, who had stayed up many nights in my room comforting me when I was sick or scared. 

*HOME (Phillip Phillips)
On May 23rd of this year, Phillip Phillips, a 21- year - old singer/ songwriter from Leesburg, Georgia, won the eleventh season of American Idol. This was no small feat for Phillips, who suffers from a painful congenital kidney condition and had eight surgeries during the show.  Although some of his performances were inconsistent due to his illness, Phillips resisted the urge to quit the show and won the crowds through his genuine and humble demeanor, warm smile, positive attitude, original talent for songwriting, and simple passion for music, which he exuded every time he performed -- no matter how bad he might have been feeling.  I loved watching him completely lose himself in his music, and also closely identified with his life story since like me, he was born premature, has a complicated medical history, and suffers with his kidneys.  I only have one kidney, although (knock on wood!) mine hasn't caused me any problems so far!  Following his victory on the show, Phillips released his first single, "Home," a folk ballad which recently became the theme song for the U.S.A women's gymnastics team during the 2012 London Olympics.  The soulful song pays personal homage to his courageous artistic and medical journey during Idol and to, in Phillips's own words, "the idea of feeling home, at peace, even when you can't actually be 'home.'"      

*BETTER IN TIME (Leona Lewis)
As the 3rd single from Leona Lewis's debut album "Spirit," released in March 2008, this song tells the story of a girl who cannot forget her ex-partner, but who declares that "it will all get better in time."  Lyrically evoking the album's theme, "Better in Time" speaks to the tragedy in Aurora, Colorado since it is about the resilience of the human spirit in the face of irreplaceable loss, and the hope "to love again..." even though it inevitably will "hurt when it heals, too."  The music video for the song, directed by Sophie Muller, includes a sequence of shots of Leona looking out a door *window* at the English countryside, as well as peering through a black veil which appears to entrap her.  These shots bring to mind lonely days and nights entraped by windows and sheets in hospital rooms, wondering if I would ever be free to"live my life how it should be." 

 

*PIANO MAN (Billy Joel)
Billy Joel is one of my favorite all-time musicians. His classic hit "Piano Man" provided a *window* to the outside world that I longed to be a part of (even though I've never been keen about frequenting bars!) during multiple hospitalizations throughout my childhood and into my young adulthood.  The song captured my imagination because it tells a vivid story about a piano-lounge singer in Los Angeles who observes the people who come to listen to him play on Saturday nights.  As the Piano Man describes these people whom he has gotten to know well, it becomes evident that most of them long for a better life, but that they are unable to change their situation or realize their dreams. Thus, the Piano Man realizes that they come to the bar every Saturday "because its me they're coming to see to forget about life for a while." I admired and aspired to the kind of freedom and power the Piano Man derived from his artistic gift as I watched the music video for the song, which VH1 would play repeatedly throughout the day at the hospital.  Thus, this song is one of my original inspirations for wanting to become a writer.