The song on the radio as I left today's
therapy appointment was 'I'm Still Standing'; anyone who saw my Edinburgh show
will understand the significance.
For those of you who didn’t see it - who must surely be in the minority - there was a sequence in which I talked about my weekly appointments at the mental health unit in Stevenage, which has to be one of the bleakest addresses on the planet, and of how my mood there would genuinely be affected by the songs that play on the radio while I’m waiting to be seen, that seem to be allowed to play through with scant regard for the state of the nervous systems of some of the patients there.
While I don’t want to steal the thunder of my own material (and my God, it’s thunderous) some of the songs I’ve heard whilst waiting to be seen at the mental health unit are pretty much the last thing you’d want to hear when you suffer from depression; some of the favourites in Jive Bunny’s depressive megamix include All By Myself, Freakout and Hotel California (a song about a bulding you may never leave).
Today’s soundtrack was the perfect follow-up to a good session after what has been a challenging few weeks, so when I passed through the foyer to hear Elton John’s ode to resilience I couldn’t help but laugh at the appropriateness, and the filmic neatness of the song to draw a line under everything I’d discussed in my appointment and had experienced in the past year with my show as a backdrop; it would almost be a good ending to the show, if that hadn’t already been pretty much done and dusted; either way it was a nice positive reminder of how far I’ve come. I knew I’d gone into Stevenage to wear a straw boater.
For those of you who didn’t see it - who must surely be in the minority - there was a sequence in which I talked about my weekly appointments at the mental health unit in Stevenage, which has to be one of the bleakest addresses on the planet, and of how my mood there would genuinely be affected by the songs that play on the radio while I’m waiting to be seen, that seem to be allowed to play through with scant regard for the state of the nervous systems of some of the patients there.
While I don’t want to steal the thunder of my own material (and my God, it’s thunderous) some of the songs I’ve heard whilst waiting to be seen at the mental health unit are pretty much the last thing you’d want to hear when you suffer from depression; some of the favourites in Jive Bunny’s depressive megamix include All By Myself, Freakout and Hotel California (a song about a bulding you may never leave).
Today’s soundtrack was the perfect follow-up to a good session after what has been a challenging few weeks, so when I passed through the foyer to hear Elton John’s ode to resilience I couldn’t help but laugh at the appropriateness, and the filmic neatness of the song to draw a line under everything I’d discussed in my appointment and had experienced in the past year with my show as a backdrop; it would almost be a good ending to the show, if that hadn’t already been pretty much done and dusted; either way it was a nice positive reminder of how far I’ve come. I knew I’d gone into Stevenage to wear a straw boater.