It’s November, and a decent chunk of my time is spent thinking of synonyms for stress. It’s still (still!) 95 degrees outside in Phoenix. There’s a pandemic, an election, and Doctoring on Tuesday. But we’re all here, chipping away at the mountain that is medical school with a plastic spork. Here are some suggestions for what to watch and listen to throughout some of the moods that might overtake us this November.
When you need soothing:
LISTEN TO: “Love’s In Need of Love Today” by Stevie Wonder
This song sounds like a sunrise; it heals every jagged edge.
WATCH: The Holiday
First, I want you to confront the grizzled cynic who lives in the back of your brain and yells at you every time you’re presented with uncomplicated joy. Pull that gremlin aside and ask him to please take a timeout for a few hours. Now that that’s done, enjoy this gentle, sweet rom-com from 2005 that features the following: tiny countryside cottages covered in hilariously rendered fake snow, Jack Black, old men rediscovering joy through water aerobics and music, Jude Law in square-rimmed glasses, and people getting lots of sleep.
BAKE: These cookies.
Trust me.
When you’re deeply overwhelmed by the news, the future, personal life, the number of due cards you still have left to do at 10 pm, etc etc:
LISTEN TO: “This Year” by the Mountain Goats
I like how the refrain pounds over those jangly guitars in a thudding, propulsive mantra: “I am gonna make it through this year / if it kills me.”
WATCH: “Homecoming” directed by Beyonce
Nobody does controlled chaos quite like Beyonce. Her staggering 2018 Coachella performance jumps from Fela Kuti to dancing the Nae Nae to Outkast to Nina Simone with a fluency and fluidity that somehow draws a straight line through music history. The show is a referendum on history, memory, personal recriminations, and politics, and it should be a mess. Under anyone else’s guiding hand, it probably would be. It’s a reminder that brilliant artists are here to sort through the sludge and make sense of all the information being thrown in our faces every day. There’s no better balm for a stressful time than watching Beyonce tackle a monstrously ambitious project with precise, methodical brushstrokes.
When you’re working so furiously that the passage of time feels less like linear hours and minutes, and more like a time-lapsed video of the sun rising and setting in double speed outside your window, and yet your to do list somehow never gets any shorter:
WATCH: “The Good Place,” Season 3, episode 4: “Jeremy Bearimy”
“That’s Tuesdays. And also July’s. And sometimes it’s never.” – a medically accurate description of how back-to-back exam weeks feel.
LISTEN TO: “Friday I’m In Love” by the Cure
On the one hand, it’s a beautiful pop song with a melody so uplifting and familiar that when Robert Smith wrote it, he spent weeks calling every person he knew in the music business and singing it for them because he was sure he’d plagiarized it. “I can’t possibly have come up with this,” he said. Like the best pop songs, it feels like it’s always existed.
On the other hand, “Friday I’m In Love” tells the story of a man trapped in a nightmarish Groundhog’s Day-style alternate dimension, where weeks spin and cycle in a repetitive daze —“I don’t care if Monday’s blue / Tuesday’s grey and Wednesday too,” he sings over and over again. The hypnotic rhythm of the song makes it perfect for repeat listening, over and over again for hours.
There’s something somewhat transcendent about extreme repetition — wearing out a piece of art until it circles past familiarity, past boredom, and becomes something else entirely. The song will get under your skin and make you notice things about music that you hadn’t before, the way it twists the hours and minutes into new shapes. Listen to the way the backing vocals slide up and down the scale like a sigh, or to the way the beat rolls up and back around like a wheel turning. Listen to the desperation creeping at the edges of Smith’s voice in the most buoyant moments. Listen closely, again and again, and you’ll get the sense that this song could go on forever, until it’s the last song on earth faintly echoing out of a broken stereo. If you listen enough times, it just might get you unstuck from whatever moment is holding onto you too tightly.
Disclaimer: These media listed above are simply the recommendations of the author, who does not receive any compensation for them.
Asif Becher is a member of the class of 2024, planning on going into psychiatry. In her spare time she enjoys music, writing, baking, and trying to get her cat to stop ignoring her.