Music and Depression, Part 1: Ode to a Wonderful Rainbow

Tuesday was a day of national strike, the kind we French seem to cherish.

Heavily affected, the metros and subways of Paris ran sporadically, forcing people to stand in tight rows along the platform, almost to its very edge, making them pack into wagons until one wondered whether there would be enough air, and causing fights to break out between disoriented commuters. Twice (on line 2, Nation-Porte Dauphine) I felt my phone vibrate in my pocket but could not free my arm to grab it; it was hot and wet and the air was suffocatingly foul.

Outside, it was gray, rainy, and cold enough to chill the sweat on my back.

Lucky for me, Tuesday was also my first day of work. I was unenthusiastic, to say the least — confused at first, later bored, but mostly anxious and unconfident throughout. And from the moment I stepped out of bed, I was sad. Where I was was certainly not where I wanted to be.

Picking out music for a day like that is a tough one, I know. I flipped through the 30-odd albums on my iPod at least a dozen times. I had almost given up, ready to resort to the Shuffle option, when the twitching blue highlight on the screen fell upon a Wonderful Rainbow. By that point I was already walking down the stairs into the neighborhood Métropolitain (line 12, Porte de la Chapelle-Mairie d'Issy) and stood a few feet from the turnstiles. What I then said to myself was: Fuck it. And everything about this day.

And that's how I came to make a truly fabulous discovery.

On the metro I found I did not mind the people, the smells, the heat, the contact with too many foreign body parts. I didn't worry about being late (and I wasn't). I felt indifferently calm, and even extended a quiet sort of sympathy towards the people suffering around me. I felt delightfully detached.

How? is what you surely ask yourself.

Believe it or not, it helped that my brain was being pummeled by frantic drums, far too fast for my heart to follow; slammed by over-muscular, frenzied guitars, climbing into hypnotic swirls of purely physical intensity, onto exhaustion and trance; assailed by a peculiar (and moderately disturbing) image — that of a bodybuilt speed freak violently humping a washing machine in the middle of a spin-drying cycle.

I closed my eyes and in my mind I proceeded to punch, kick, jump, hurl myself at the walls of the subway car, against the greasy metal poles, against the center seats and at the men, women and babies who occupied them. Then I imagined myself running, running away, until my lungs collapsed and I passed out somewhere on the Parisian asphalt.

I couldn't do any of that — couldn't move at all, that is — but a direct pathway had been established between the music and every nerve in my body. My anxious brain was subdued, or numbed, while sound and body became united in an triumphant mental spasm, an eruption of pure, gleeful energy into which my anger, my anxiety, my sadness flamed like pine needles in a forest fire. In other words, I no longer needed to be violent to myself and to others; the music channeled all of that for me.

So while everything around me throbbed and rocked erratically, loud and incandescent, I pictured people's heads bursting into funny pink geysers, and my body surged with excitement and certainty as my mind wrestled with blistering noise and reckless acceleration.

Thank you then, oh Wonderful Rainbow, for beating my brain, my heart, my breath into submission last Tuesday — at ten, at twelve, then again at two and five. Thank you for having stilled the anguish, pinned it to the floor and kept a strong knee on its slippery chest.

I — and you, faithful reader — now know: as a remedy against depression and defeatism, hardcorenoisepunkelectricchaosmusicviolencesonicmasochism works wonders. Try it sometime, and marvel. The Wonderful Rainbow will always be there to illuminate the darkest of times (housefires and explosions!).

+++++++++++ Lightning Bolt - Wonderful Rainbow (Load, 2003) +++++++++++++

Note1: Hypermagic Mountain is often prescribed in lieu of the Rainbow. Rest assured, it works just as well, if not better.

Note2: The money you save on psychotherapy and antidepressants will come in handy to pay for hearing aids when you turn 30.