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May 7, 2019
Sassafras Lowrey's Playlist for Hir Novel "Healing/Heeling"
In the Book Notes series, authors create and discuss a music playlist that relates in some way to their recently published book.
Previous contributors include Jesmyn Ward, Lauren Groff, Bret Easton Ellis, Celeste Ng, T.C. Boyle, Dana Spiotta, Amy Bloom, Aimee Bender, Heidi Julavits, Hari Kunzru, and many others.
Sassafras Lowrey's innovatively told memoir-in-essays Healing/Heeling is both heartbreaking and heartwarming in the tales of hir childhood abuse and the redemption ze found while working with dogs.
Michael Thomas Ford wrote of the book:
"Merging the mechanics of dog handling courses with the intensely personal story of how relationships with dogs have shaped hir life, Sassafras Lowrey has created a new kind of memoir, both deeply engaging and emotionally devastating. Combining poetry and prose, ze explores the themes of queerness, family, and the deep bond between humans and dogs with raw honesty and grace."
In hir own words, here is Sassafras Lowrey's Book Notes music playlist for hir memoir Healing/Heeling:
Not Ready To Make Nice - Dixie Chicks
This is my go-to angry song that really touches on some of the feelings of loss and anger that I tried to capture into the collection. I don't think that this is an angry book but it is a book that grapples with big feelings. This is a song about living unapologetically, and not changing because someone thinks you should. Amen.
Burning Bridges - Chris Pureka
Fun fact at nineteen I almost tattooed the chorus “rats in the walls” from this song up my ribs. Ultimately I’m glad I didn’t, but I love this song and the way it so fully captures failed relationships and heartache of trying to figure out how to build a life without all the right pieces, without the right materials and people and watching it crumble. That’s a lot of what the earlier pieces in this collection are grappling with.
A Dream Is A Wish: Disney’s Cinderella
I’m a big believer in dreams and magic (I’m also a Disney fanatic but this book doesn’t have anything to do with that). Specifically dogs have been the primary figures in all of my dreams (and many of my nightmares) and this song is a fun feel good reminder of the importance of following your dreams. I also might have sung this song out of tune on repeat as a first grader when I brought my first dog home.
I didn’t - Amy Ray
We can heal but the scars remain. Those healed over scars and trigger points were a focal point of what I was trying to give voice to when writing this collection. We carry the scars with us into our new lives, into new relationships and I think this song captures that really well.
That Summer - Garth Brooks
This song is actually mentioned briefly in the book! It’s a song about a teenage boy and an older woman and a love affair they have together one summer. It’s a complicated song in a contemporary understanding of and and consent but I am including it on the playlist because as a baby lesbian the summer before I was outed, the summer before I was homeless I played this song on LOOP headphones plugged into my discman while working in the sun painting dog agility equipment. I really identified with this song and the teenage boy (plus or minus a pronoun) as a young dyke deeply in love with the older women I trained dogs with.
Alanis Morissette - You Oughta Know
This song played a lot the summer of 2001 when I was living in a crappy Southern city in a bad relationship falling so briefly in love with a dog to try to heal wounds that were still so fresh and the awful relationship that eighteen year old me thought was as good as I deserved, that eighteen year old me thought was maybe love. These are some of the stories that come to life in Healing/Heeling so I had to include this song on a playlist.
Rural Faggot - Amy Ray
I grew up on the edge of suburbia and the edge of rural. I grew up listening to country and fled to the city when I came out. Country and queerness felt completely incompatible for me, and it wasn’t just about how I felt I was shown explicitly and violently that the communities where I came form no longer wanted me. The first time I heard Rural Faggot I had to stop and catch my breath, it was like someone had recorded song that talked about the worlds I came from - the rural ones and the queer ones.
The Angels Are Crying - Peter Noone
Ironically this was my favorite song in middle school. I’m not sure what that says about me as a pre-teen, probably that I had a LOT of unexamined trauma, not to mention foreshadowing to becoming homeless as a teenager. In this book I am touching on the failings of humans, and the way that (dog) angels I believe are always with me.
Iowa - Dar Williams
This song is on the Healing/Heeling playlist only because reminds me of the drive cross country from NYC to Portland Oregon that my partner and I made (with our 3 dogs and 3 cats) specifically to meet the medical needs of our two biggest dogs, another story that is part of this collection. We were staying the night in the largest truckstop in America on I-80 when this song came on Pandora and it just made me laugh
Mean - Taylor Swift
This is a real feel good song for me. It’s a song about overcoming where you come from, and leaving those mean people behind to pursue your own life. People who don’t believe in you, who don’t believe in your vision just don’t deserve you and have no power over you and the life that you are building for yourself.
Let It Go - Disney’s Frozen
Cheesy? Yes perhaps a little, but I have no shame in my love of FROZEN. Also I don’t think there is a better theme song for reclaiming your life and rebuilding it on your own terms which is exactly the trajectory of stories in Healing/Heeling. Sorry not sorry if this song gets stuck in your head!
The Dance - Garth Brooks
I have lyrics from this song tattooed on my leg. It was one of the first tattoos I got: “I could of missed the pain but I’d of had to miss the dance.” I had it tattooed in (now blurring) cursive surrounding the course map for a dog agility course, an experience that I reference in the collection. This is a song about love and loss and longing and the pain being worthwhile. The perfect song to wrap up this playlist with.
Sassafras Lowrey and Healing/Heeling links:
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for A Little Queermas Carol
Largehearted Boy playlist by the author for Lost Boi
also at Largehearted Boy:
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