by Peter Berryman

April 2003

Lonesome Therapy

Lately, out of curiosity, for solace, and for inspiration, I've been combing the web and my own tattered library of songbooks for songs of peace, and have found hundreds of them, some of which have given me ideas for my own dubious song experiments. But strangely, I find that the songs I sing to myself to keep functionally sane in these grim times are lonely and sad songs.

Thinking about this tendency reminded me of the Whither Zither written for October 2001, right after 9/11, in which I had this quote:

Altshuler in 1941 first suggested that a patient can be relieved of some of the symptoms caused from deep seated emotions such as grief or rage by matching their moods to music that evokes the same emotional qualities.(1)

This sentence has haunted me ever since I found it, and its message has come back full force thanks to the current heart-wrenching state of affairs.

My hunch is that Picasso benefited more, psychologically, from painting the nightmarish Guernica than he would have from painting a happy picnic scene instead, at that particular epoch in history. According to the experts, we're supposed to tell our kids that it helps to draw pictures of what they're feeling in such times. No doubt Picasso would agree. I think that this is good advice for grownups as well as kids, and that it is as true for music as for visual art.

I haven't found out any more about "Altshuler" or this study, and all I have from it is that one-sentence encapsulation. But if there is any truth to it, this craving of lonesome songs confirms that (in me at least) one reaction to the current wretched world events is a feeling of loneliness.

Fortunately, there are plenty of songs about feeling lonely. Searching the BMI song database at bmi.com, I found that there are 4,397 songs with "lonely" in their title, 3,796 with "lost", and 1,544 with "lonesome". Just dragging around in the shallows of my own brain pond, I have scooped up such keepers as my all time current favorite, the popular downer I'm So Lonesome I Could Cry by Hank Williams Sr., himself. I think this is the most lonesome sounding melody I have ever heard that isn't in a minor key. Minor chords are used with it here and there, but the melody is definitely major. The repetition of the trudging "mi, do-mi, do-mi, do (then down to 'so'), mi-do, mi-do (then down to 'so' again) at the beginning of each verse is like dragging a 100 lb bag of damp rocks across an empty parking ramp on a cold winter night. It's like "Step, drag-step, drag-step, drag-flop. Step, drag-step, drag-flop." And those lyrics!

Hear that lonesome whipporwill; He sounds too blue to fly / The midnight train is whining low; I'm so lonesome I could cry

Then there's a verse about the long slow night, then the absurd and tragic:

Did you ever see a robin weep; When leaves begin to die / That mean's he's lost his will to live; I'm so lonesome I could cry(2)

Wow! If that don't blow your lonesomeness synapses, nothing will! Good ol' traditional Down In The Valley is another beautiful but strangely sad song:

Down in the valley, valley so low / Hang your head over, hear the wind blow

What in the world does that mean? How do you hang your head over a valley? Must be more like a gorge, with cliff faces and a pedestrian overlook. But anyway, though many versions of this song go on to talk specifically about heartbreak, there is something generically lonely about the idea of listening to the wind blow, as Dylan knew when he wrote the philosophically lonesome Blowin' In The Wind, and as lyricist Alan Jay Lerner knew when he wrote They Call The Wind Mariah:

Mariah blows the stars around / Sets the clouds a'flyin' / Mariah makes the mountain sound / Like folks was up there dyin'(3)

Another lonely wind song -- the first song for which I ever consciously learned the lyrics -- is The Wayward Wind, all about lonely heartbreak:

...I'm now alone, with a broken heart...The Wayward Wind, is a restless wind; a restless wind, that yearns to wander / And he (the gender changes depending on the performer) was born, the next of kin; the next of kin, to the Wayward Wind(4)

You Are My Sunshine, though it's about sunshine and not wind, is another bittersweet song which, like Down In The Valley, doesn't really get specifically sad until the second verse.

Incidentally, one aspect of the second verse ("The other night dear...") has always driven me nuts: It doesn't rhyme, but it could rhyme SO easily! It could have been "I dreamed I held you by my side" which would have rhymed with "And I hung my head and cried." But no! Maybe this rhyme disappointment is in keeping with the mood of the verse:

The other night, dear, as I lay sleeping / I dreamed I held you in my arms / When I awoke, dear, I was mistaken / And I hung my head and cried.

This missed opportunity to rhyme reminds me of the billboard I saw somewhere years ago, "Any Tux $39.99". For one more penny it could have been "Any Tux Forty Bucks."

Anyway, there are thousands of them out there, those sad and lonely songs: Danny Boy, Heartbreak Hotel, Red River Valley, Somewhere Over The Rainbow, I Feel Like A Motherless Child, Goodnight Irene, The Kerry Dance, Tennessee Waltz, Ramblin' Boy, Deportee, Barbara Allen, On Top Of Old Smoky, Goodbye Old Paint, and a million blues moans and bluegrass "high lonesome" songs. Drape a bib across your Gretch and have yourself a catharsis; you'll be glad you did.

(1) I. N. Altshuler, and B. H. Shebesta, "Music As an Aid in the Management of the Psychotic Patient," Journal of Nervous and Mental Disorders, 94, 1941, 179-183. From "The Healing Powers of Music" by M. Giles, in The Electronic Journal of the Virginia Music Educators Assoc. http://www.music.vt.edu/hostedsites/vmea_notes/1990years/1994/no2/healing.html

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