I'm Adely Mom and this is The Slowdown.

Sometimes in the middle of the day, in the middle of my life, in the middle of the pandemic,

I stop what I'm working on and blast music so loud the dog wakes up.

So loud that I can sing along with it until I have literal tears in my eyes and my throat

aches from trying to reach notes that I have never and will never reach.

I can never hear my voice over the music and I like that too.

It is like being swallowed up, dissolving in a sound much bigger than me.

I love that feeling as if music can actually reset your mood, your body, your health,

your mind and suddenly with the sweet notes reverberating in the blood you feel fixed,

even just for a second.

As if right then, in that moment, things just might be okay.

This has been my coping skill lately and I know right now we all need more coping skills.

In today's poem by the genius poet Ellen Bass, we see a time when one song might ease

the pain of the pandemic, ease even the personal grief the pandemic has brought us.

During the pandemic, I listened to the July 26, 1965, Joie Le Pen recording of a Love

Supreme by Ellen Bass.

The first familiar know them anywhere notes bless me this savage morning.

Coltrane's horn racing up and down every alley in and out of veins and over the faces

of lakes and into the heart of stones.

And when he repeats a love supreme again and again, it's as though if he says it enough,

he can ease that mercy down into me into the tiny, arsicular chain, the chemical rush,

the spark and my brain getting it.

...