I have high blood pressure and a bit of anxiety, I try really hard to be calm and to meditate and I am really good at sitting very very still and looking like I am meditating while my brain runs like a rat on a wheel. So my Mum sent me her banjos and Mr T bought me a mandolin and I found the lovely Erica Graf, who is doing a wonderful job of teaching these rickety fingers and noisy brain to focus on music instead of arguments and the things that I said that I should not have said, and the things that I did not say that I should have.
Music to help with an anxious brain. I guess I first realised it was working when I was stuck in traffic down in the city and instead of shouting at me my brain was running through the twelve bar blues and my fingers were trying to find the Cs and Es on my steering wheel.
I have a list in the Cookie House of songs that I want to learn. I have fairly noisy tastes so they range from Don Henley’s The Boys of Summer, to Dolly Parton’s Tenessey Homesick Blues, I also have a hilarious song called Heaven’s Just a Sin Away, which makes me laugh every time I hear it.
The Man Who Holds the Water is a song by Rob Thomas, one of my all time favourite musicians. I began to play this in my head long before I transferred it to the mandolin. We are using it now as a study piece, so I am putting it up here for you Mum as I can’t get these to you any other way. For all of you other Cookie House people, if you suffer from anxiety like I do, maybe you could try this, taking up an instrument and finding yourself a wonderful teacher who will help turn the noise in your brain into melodies. Anyway, I am just a baby mandolinist, so be kind. Xxm