Siblings Soundtracked

Today is my Graduation Day … for the PhD I completed in memory of my brother, Martin … whose birthday will fall exactly one month hence … he would’ve been 40 years old this year.

I am somewhat without words to explain the messy mixture of emotions that such details cumulatively provoke - I think I still fail to fully comprehend the totality of what has happened since 15^th December 2011.

I am not able to see my brother’s face in mind without photographic aids, and many memories I reach for I cannot grasp as I’d like - they are stuck or lost or both. Yet, with certain songs and sounds, I am permitted moments of reconnection, permission to linger in a good memory.  

So, I’ve made a playlist.

I used to make playlists all the time. It is not over-egging things to say that across my 20s, I couldn’t/wouldn’t leave the house without my music catalogue. The arrival of the iPod Classic provided a life-altering and indispensable treasure - my entire musical life in my pocket, a playlist for every possible moment in the menu. I loved spending hours doing nothing but appreciating, singing along, dancing, reminiscing, sound-tracking my life into list orders.

I’m not sure when spoken word and ‘serious’ and/or ‘educational’ podcasts took over music as the accompaniment to my daily travels and activities, but I recently realised that this has indeed occurred; music has taken a bit of a backseat in the face of other life pressures. Awareness of Martin’s birthday again approaching, though, has encouraged music to blow the hot air sideways to the wings (for at least a little while).

Martin was a musician in every sense, a music listener, feeler, and importantly maker, a connoisseur of complex time signatures etc. My relationship with music rests mostly on the former elements, less about making than appreciation. I’m a music user, an emotional responder. I like what I like often most based on how I physically react to what I hear. I soothe and communicate (to myself as well as others) through my music choices. Songs and musical pieces are to me individually and collectively symbolic, powerful and meaningful - melodies and lyrics help me to clarify experiences and feelings … and, I think, help me to explain to others the depths of an experience’s impact.

Thus, opening with a song from one of my brother’s favourite bands, which also happened to be playing as I completed the final version of the thesis I conducted in his memory, I present a playlist in two halves – part one are those songs and music that to me are Martin and my memories of us; part two comprises the tracks that I have turned to or feel that explain my experience of sibling suicide loss.

You can hear it here: 

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6xn6Ez2V70On5g4TFlQQef?si=C0B4bBNrSkmh5cMMuYB8zw&pi=e-bWiA8b_NQ5Wy

Playlist Part 1 - Martin and Me

There are quite possibly millions of songs that could have been included, which many others would link with Martin memories. These are mine alone. Know my brother and my sibling memories of us, (as I knew/know him and them), through these songs. I won’t describe each and every memory … just a few of the big ones …:

• Karma Police by Radiohead – Martin was a superfan of this band … that’s it. This is just a general fact.

• The Beatles – this is the first ‘band association’ with Martin that I recall. Moving on from a fascination with the Romans, I remember music becoming the focus via an ensuing (bit of an) obsession with the Beatles in his younger years.

• Hotel California by Eagles – Martin performed the guitar solo in this song magnificently and whilst I wasn’t there to see the actual performance, I heard all the buzzy chatter about it from family, his friends and his guitar teacher at his memorial, learning that there was a video of the event online (here: [from 4 mins in] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MwEZ4ue9xg) This was his solo.

• Classical Gas by Mason Williams – Martin’s electric guitar playing earned a lot of attention, but I loved his acoustic and classical playing most. It was beautiful, spine tingling at times. One of the memories that decided to stick around for me after he left was of us both sitting in his bedroom, just chatting nothing. I don’t know why but in the conversation I asked him to play Classical Gas for me. Took a little coaxing but he picked up the instrument and played it from memory. I just loved hearing him playing it, and watching his fingers fly. He really did make it look so easy to play the guitar. I asked him to record this piece for me as he had played it that day and he did. I used to listen to it as a calm-down-during-London-commute mechanism. Apple, however, destroyed that recording through an automatic device update, and I’m never gonna forgive them for that….

• Mustang Sally, The Commitments version – one summer, I forget which one, I was asked by the lead singer of the band Martin played in to sing backing vocals on this song for a performance at a Summerbreeze festival in Morecambe Bay (wooo!). This ended up being one of the very few times we performed together. I will always regret not doing more musically together but then we didn’t exactly share tastes … which brings me to …

• Rockstar by Nickelback – I was a ‘little bit’ of a Bon Jovi fan across my teens, and we went as a family with a couple of friends to see them in Manchester. Nickelback was supporting, which I was thrilled about also, but my brother regarded them with (absolute) derision. The opening guitar chords blasted out over the stadium; Martin turned to me and exasperatedly shouted ‘It’s like Nirvana never happened’. He was disgusted and it was utterly hilarious.

• Dry Country by Bon Jovi – as mentioned, Bon Jovi ruled my adolescent music-world; Martin considered them at the level only of the ladder rung above Nickelback. ‘Hate’ is a strong word but one I heard Martin utter often in relation to my listening preference for this band. However, a magical day came when he shared that, ‘Actually, there is one OK song’. Dry County was the Bon Jovi song he had respect for because, ‘the guitar solo is epic’. He had decided it was fair to proffer his admiration for this one track because he had tried to master the solo himself but could not, in fact, manage to play it … Hmm.

• Everytime by Britney Spears – I lie – there was a second day of magic. In the early 2000s, I did like me some Britney pop. I danced a lot. Britney was also on Martin’s ‘Music That Heather Likes That Is F*%?!*g Awful’ list. I was informed of his assessment of my musical tastes on a near-daily basis by text. Yet, one tremendous moment came: “Heather, I have a confession. Everytime is actually a decent listen.” I think I might have actually guffawed. I did not let him forget that he had told me this. What was nice though, was that after this, we did actually seem to become more able to identify certain music items and performers where our opinion(s)coincided …

• Kitty Jay by Seth Lakeman – Seth Lakeman’s London concert at the Regent’s Park Open Air Theatre was the first and last concert Martin and I attended together just the two of us. The weather was beautiful, the live version of this song was incredible, and we were amazed by the amount of broken violin strings it created… There was also much mirth at the fact I nearly got chucked out for taking sneaky pictures with my phone.

• North by Paul Mounsey – I have no idea how we came to discover a mutual liking of the soundtrack to the ‘Visit Scotland’ TV advert, but this piece provoked more than a single dog-walking conversation about its composition and several texts regarding ‘did you see the ad on the telly last night?’. Most random but lovely common ground.  

• Big Pimpin’ – Jay-Z – around the time I was getting big into my street and hip-hop dance classes whilst living in London, Jay-Z headlined Glastonbury. Martin actually called me afterward and nothing short of raved. The performance had absorbed him and he declared himself surprised by Jay-Z’s musicality. He began to work through the Jay-Z back catalogue and I’d get the occasional ‘I like this one … and this one …’ texted commentary. Nice.

• The Strictly Come Dancing Theme Tune – Martin’d likely roll his eyes at me for this, but there is good reason for my inclusion of this particular TV show theme. Natasha Kaplinksy won series one of Strictly, the series everyone got caught up in because it was ‘the novel first one’. Now, Martin, through Strictly, had come to harbour a little crush on Natasha … and I met her the day after she lifted the trophy. I was doing a PhD on the BBC and was attending an event at the White City BBC Television Centre to mark 50 years of BBC TV News. Kaplinksky, working for the BBC as a newsreader at the time, was there; naturally I asked if I could have her autograph for my brother. She obliged and that earned me a massive sibling hug.

• Tamacun by Rodrigo y Gabriela – one of our last shared musical moments was at my wedding. I had put this track on the playlist knowing his appreciation for Rodrigo y Gabriela’s guitar work. I think I wanted him to know I’d thought about what he’d like too whilst planning the wedding. I did know he wasn’t doing so great at this time. We were at the dinner table when it played. He was like a dog - sharp lift of the head, you could see the ears prick up. He looked directly at me, pointed upward, and mouthed, “Rodrigo y Gabriela?”. I nodded. He smiled, looked down and just seemed to get lost in listening. He left the wedding early as he was struggling, but I’m glad we had that moment.

• Lord of the Rings and Inception soundtracks – alongside his musicianship, I knew Martin as a lover of film. He would send me reviews as well as movie summaries, mostly by text (which sadly are all lost because of over-time technological changes …), later by Facebook messenger. Sometimes the accounts would arrive at 2am, 3am, 4am, which I can’t say I always appreciated when the device pinged me awake but I never turned the phone off –ultimately I found relief in the messages that landed, because he was still telling film stories, contacting me, at times when I was, simply put, really bloody worried about him and didn’t have an ounce of a clue what to do or how to help him. Lord of the Rings and Inception were particular favourites he went on about to me, in reference to their sound as much as their visuals, (he had a particular appreciation for the theme attached to Rohan references in LOTR), hence their inclusion here.

• (Everything I Do) I Do It For You by Bryan Adams – I couldn’t not include the theme to our most important movie in this list. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves linked us as siblings in so many ways. But this song in particular also provided a ‘fallback’ option for Martin to employ when he did actually teach someone else to play guitar. As he explained to me when I offered to advertise him as a teacher:

“The first guitar lesson is always FREE. My template is: half learning the rudiments, half learning a song you like. If that is a song I don't know or do hate, we default to Everything I Do.” (18 June 2009)

• Wish You Were Here by Avril Lavigne – Martin gathered and left behind so much music. I’ve only looked at the collection of tracks on his laptop once since he died. Not gonna lie, it was a surprise to find tracks by Cheryl Cole on there – I would have so liked to have wound him up about that. There was also discovered a fondness for Sk8ter Boi by Avril Lavigne. I liked that he liked Avril Lavigne but there was no chance of me singing that song – I found instead one that said it all: Wish You Were Here. I am, however, still unable to sing it all the way through without a throat cracking …   

Playlist Part 2 – Soundtrack of Suicide Bereavement

The impact of losing someone through suicide is complicated, fluid, long-term. There is no sequence of stages to work through in order to achieve some grief-end goal. There is much reoccurrence and revisiting of things and place and ideas you had though/assumed solid. Unavoidable for me also has been identity crisis and self-critique. Suicide is also simultaneously a public (opinion) topic and one that many fear and/or don’t wish to engage with, which just adds to the complexity you already have to navigate as a bereaved person. Put bluntly, it’s just bloody hard and exhausting being a person bereaved by suicide.

The songs here in part two, in particular reference to the lyrics, are those that for me express all the things I have needed to be understood as I’ve continued to live with the ripple effects of Martin’s death. I have sought out across the years music and songs that can say for me what I can’t or haven’t been able to, because I still have insufficient words to really express not just what suicide grief is but what it means to me. I still haven’t a full vocabulary to convey the emotions; the thoughts; the reactions; the wishes; the self-admonishments that I have had to juggle and muddle through. But I think this part of the list is the best I’ve been able to compile to really cover all the experiences/ground and convey the confusion; despair; weight; anger; missing; longing; loneliness; own brushes with mental distress; hiding/performing; fear; regret; shame/guilt; deep want for ‘a return to normality’ (without really knowing what that means) that I’ve experienced and carried so far. I also wanted to illuminate the strength that I also happen to think I have developed through this experience – I have fought; walked; memorialised in helpful ways; spoken out loud. Indeed, having said at the start of this thought splurge that podcasts have somewhat usurped music for me, I do have to acknowledge at this point their thought-provoking value – one listened to conversation made the point that suicide loss can often ‘have a silence about it’, that it can prompt discomfort and loss of words. This can mean that for (some of) those who are directly affected, the grief can be something ‘demanding of a hearing’. And certainly for me, it has needed to be an open, heard grief to prevent worse pain. I have experienced uninvited-but-still-proffered negative reactions to my talking about suicide (and tangentially mental health and distress) from my experiential viewpoint - trolls are gonna troll - and there’s no denying the self-doubt such comments/judgements have prompted. But I do sense that, in large part having now completed Martin’s PhD, I may be arriving at the point of:

‘I'm not scared to be seen,

I make no apologies,

This is me.’

The closing few songs on the playlist contain the messages I wish my brother had received from me before his death, stuff I wish I’d ensured he knew, simply:

‘I’ve got you brother … you’re my brother and I love you, that’s the truth’ (Kodaline) 

‘I wish you knew you had a lifeline’ (Tom Walker)

And so lastly, I shall conclude with an ask. If you do have a moment on this forthcoming 11^th August, and if you are so inclined, please pick a song you might like on this playlist, give it a listen and remember my brother, on his 40^th, through music.

https://open.spotify.com/playlist/6xn6Ez2V70On5g4TFlQQef?si=C0B4bBNrSkmh5cMMuYB8zw&pi=e-bWiA8b_NQ5Wy

 

If you’d like to hear any of Martin’s own music please visit this website: https://www.martinsutherlandmusic.co.uk/music.html