Talk About Your Day in English | English in Daily Life | English Learning Podcast

(upbeat music) Hello and welcome to songs for the struggling artist, the blog cast. This is episode five hundred and fifteen. My name is Emily Rainbow Davis. Hello, welcome to the blog cast. So last week I was at podcast movement, which is a conference for podcasters and podcasting and podcast businesses and whatever. I'm still sorting through all my thoughts and experiences about it. I haven't quite found what I want to say, how I am going to, you know, I don't know, process all of that. But one thing I am feeling acutely in this moment is just how different this podcast is from all of those podcasts. I have not felt like such a weirdo artist in a long time. It was really something. Anyway, there will be more about this. I'm sure in the future, I just have, I feel like there's so much that I'm not, I'm not clear what where the, you know, markers are for the experience yet. If I met you at podcast movement, hello, welcome to the podcast for the first time. That's interesting and fun. The way this works is I'm going to say a couple of other things. Then I'm going to read you a blog. Then I'm going to sing you a song related to the blog. And today's blog is a bout, well, inspired by a post that I saw on a subreddit, the migraine subreddit. I think that there's not a lot to say in anticipation of it. There will be some swearing in that blog. And it refers to a blog that I wrote several years ago, in the early stages of this podcast, actually, I believe. And it's called, that one is called migraines and the fucking patriarchy. So it might be useful to go back and listen to that one. I'll have to look up and see what number it was, but it was a while ago. But this one makes reference to that just a little bit in case that is helpful. So this one is called, a month in a cottage won't do it. Someone in the migraine subreddit made a post about curing herself of migraines by spending a month in a cottage by herself doing some psychological exercises. This kind of post usually generates a widespread of responses. There are those that are glad to have something else to try. There are those that wish they had the privilege of taking a month in a cottage, and those that have the flavor of that meme of the school picture of a little boy frowning with, happy for you, written over it. It's a bold move to post something like this in a community for an incurable condition. Personally, I don't have any question about whether or not this would work for me. It wouldn't. Is it because I don't want to sit down and work out? What's driving my pain? Nope, I've done it. I know what my migraines are trying to protect me from. I set out to go do the work of figuring it all out one day, and before I could get to my destination, the answer came to me, clear and definitive. It's the fucking patriarchy, and no month in a cottage is going to fix that. I watched the video that this cottage dweller says helped her cure her migraines, and the first step, this healer, describes, is being ready to believe that you can get better. The proposition being that if you can open yourself to the possibility of healing yourself, maybe you can. And I've fallen for this sort of thing in the past. I put my belief in many mind-body connections to the test. I'm not saying it's not possible, because I know the mind is powerful, but I do have a clear sense of my own limitations. And thus far, my mind has not been able to do more for me than drugs can. New medicine is happening all the time, and so far, it continues to improve the quality of my life, dramatically. I've had months on my own in cottage conditions, full of self-reflection and willingness to engage with the thorny questions, and not once has that healed me of migraines. I was recently in the country, and I had a three-my-grain streak, so I'm skeptical of the cottage cure. In my case, I think it's because my body is having responses to a systemic problem. One that is well outside of myself, and I can't turn off my warning alarms on my own. Would I prefer to have a less painful response to the patriarchy? Sure would. And the new meds seem to help with that. But living in a sexist world leaves its scars. There are the actual changes in the brain that they've recently discovered. Women's brains are scarred by sexism. That's for real. And my theory about my own brain is that that cortical thinning is what brought migraines into my life. Without the cushion of a thick cortical lining, I became vulnerable to migraines. And certainly our country, if not the world, has been in a kind of intense patriarchal paroxysm. So my migraine brain has been doing its best to look out for me. It's trying to protect me from the fucking patriarchy. And I am grateful for its efforts, even if they are particularly effective. I mean, by all means, take a month in a cottage, if you can. Maybe this works for people for whom the migraine is personal. But I'd be very surprised if it could fix a response to years in a sexist world. Only good drugs are going to help with that. So I know some podcast apps include the show art like of individual episodes and some do not. So for those of you who have the kind of app that does not show the podcast art, I will tell you that I included a picture of the meme of the kid in his plaid shirt and his pink pants. And he is frowning away. It's like three different squares. One says congrats. The other one says happy for you. And the third one says nice. Anyway, I feel the visual is useful for this context. So, well, what song do I have for you? Well, I looked for songs about, you know, a month in the country, a month away, going to the country, living in the country, you know, someone that had a kind of bucolic atmosphere. And there were a few. But the one that I decided to do is a shorter timeline than a month. She says she takes 10 days in Woodstock, taken it easy. So if you know the song, and I'm going to guess most people don't, it's a song called Woodstock. But it's not the Woodstock you're thinking of. This is Alice Smith's Woodstock. And it's a song I have loved for many years. It's on my, you know, dance playlist. I enjoy it very much. But it did seem like exactly the right sense of like having a retreat, going somewhere, taking some time to, you know, replenish. And also it shares a kind of skepticism about the-- not that it's going to not work. It's going to work. I mean, it's good to go away and replenish and do all of those things. It's just that it doesn't necessarily solve all of the intractable problems. I don't think she's saying all that in the song. I'm just saying there's a little of both worlds in this song. So I'm going to play that for you in just a minute. Meanwhile, thank you so much for listening. If you like this podcast, please tell someone about it. Like, review, subscribe, click all the stars you can find. If you'd like to support this podcast, I would make a huge difference at patreon.com/emilyardavis. There's also Kofi. There's PayPal. You can do a paid subscription on Substack, if that's your thing. But mostly, I am grateful to have your ears, to have you be listening, to have you hear with me. So for this song, the bass is really something in the recording, in Alice Smith's recording. I mean, it's funky. I wanted to answer it. It's got a groove. And it's almost impossible to access that particular thing. quality when it's just me and the guitar. I did for like a day, I was like, "Should I try and find my old tuba player and see if I can get him to come over and record this song with me?" Because it just wants, you know, I don't think you'll miss it not knowing this song, but since I do know this song, I miss it. And it was trying, like the biggest struggle was trying to figure out how to give it to you straight, you know. Not to say that there's no groove in there, I think there is. But it doesn't have a groove of a funky bass, as I'm saying. So here is Alice Smith's Woodstock. I had this really fucked up dream and I just let it slip away thinking about all the bills I got to pay. I think I'll hawk my Trinity and buy it back on better days. Spent 10 days in Woodstock taking it easy. So would you please excuse me? Because I'm feeling quite sad and I'm happy again. Because it's been 10 days in Woodstock taking it easy. Feeling now like a cello, go ahead and mark the season, say hello to the fishes for me. Wow, man, what a sunny day. I can't wait to get out and play. Walk down those city streets, laughing at all those city creeps. And I've got a lot to organize. Got a lot of thinking to do. Another day the sun will be out. Another day the sky will be blue. All the crazy fish saying, Spent 10 days in Woodstock taking it easy. Feeling now like a cello, go ahead and mark the season, say hello to the fishes. [BLANK_AUDIO]