Stuart Atkinsmith
Stuart Atkinsmith
My peace offering is to listen to a song that makes you feel good, whatever that means to you!
During the Covid-19 pandemic, it is so important that everyone worries about their mental health. I think listening to music you like is one of the best things you can do to deal with the mess of this pandemic. Personally, I have listened to a lot of Bach, Beethoven, and Haydn over the last couple months. They always seem to calm me down. What also calms me down is calm, soft pop music as well. I found this song a couple of months ago, and I think it thematically represents all kinds of feelings that we have experienced over the past year. The song’s title is Be (Vis ta Vie) by Nenashi and 20syl. It has a soft, reminiscing sort of feeling to it that I think represents at least what I am feeling over the pandemic.
The song has quite a bit of cool aspects that I personally like a lot. The song starts with a series of chords, starting with a VI chord, moving to the V chord, then resolving at the I chord. This continues throughout the whole song, but meanwhile the melodies and harmonies change; that is what makes the song so interesting! I really also love the movement of some of the lines. You will notice that the line just moves the line down two half steps (from the VI to V chord), one half step at a time, and if you’ve ever played something like that on the piano, it is super interesting what you can do with the melody when things like that are done.
In general, the lyrics of the song talk about the million things that happen to you in life. They talk about how you get lost in life, but how it’s important to look at the thousand milestones you’ve already hit, and the milestones ahead of you. It is important to reach each milestone one step at a time, whether it takes one try to hit the next milestone, or whether it takes one-thousand tries.
During this pandemic, we must think about these things: the milestones we have already hit during this pandemic (such as making it through an entire semester of online college!), and the small steps we need to take to reach the next milestone that we want to hit, no matter how numerous these steps need to be to reach the milestone.
I find that whenever I feel down, this song lifts me up because of these small things. Not only is it a good song in my opinion, but it has an extremely important underlying message that you don’t need to be a genius to achieve your goals in life. It just takes that inspiration and that one first step to make a dream happen.
Listen to music: if you find a piece of music that is special to you, relish in it - save it for those moments in life where you need it.
I am a double major in Violin Performance at the School of Music, Theatre and Dance, and Mathematics at the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts at the University of Michigan. I enjoy listening to music, playing music, and thinking deeply about the world.