The Medicine Cabinet #24

Sam The Man On The Moon

by Nayt Housman

Music is my medicine. Is it yours? I ask the public six golden questions to find out if and how they use music to feed the soul.

'Sam' by Nayt Housman

There is a man, a man named Sam, a man named Sam whom I’ve actually known for quite some tam… I mean time. I’ve actually known 26 year old Sam for most of my ten years in Brisbane and one thing we’ve shared other than friendship is a very similar taste in music. Even so, there’s always something new to find out about a man whose life passion is learning. So let’s see what music secrets rattle around inside Sam’s brain.


Who are the musicians and/or bands that flick your switch and turn up the volume?

 
Sam: OMG that’s so difficult! Ummmm, Joanna Newsome of course, she’s just incredible. She comes from that kind of like isolated mountain living that’s so amazing. So I find her quite inspiring. Then Talking Heads, I remember hearing ‘This Must Be The Place’ where he dances with a lamp on stage, it’s just so incredible. David Byrne is so amazing. So definitely those two and the last one…OMG it’s SO DIFFICULT! Let’s go Adele, just for one that comes to mind because I like that kind of mainstream as well. I find her song writing beautiful and she has a really clear voice, which I like.

Why do you think they are the pills that cure your ills?

 
Sam: Well Joanna Newsome, it’s her whole being I guess. She’s so different and has grown up in a way that a lot of people haven’t so I think that gives her obviously, a special aura about her, and yeah, she’s just mesmerizing. When I saw her in concert I got that kind of tunnel vision, where all of the light around kind of fades and it’s just her on stage, which is just so magical. She’s just got that fixation about her. So yeah that’s what I love about her.


Talking Heads, they were so different when they came onto the scene and yeah, I think all three of these people are just such amazing, confident people and they don’t care what anyone else thinks. Like even Adele as a person she’s so awesome, like she could be at the Oscars or the Grammy’s and be like “Oh I don’t care!” as she speaks in her cockney accent and all Hollywood’s like gasping. But yeah I think that’s such a good quality to have.

What kind of high do they give you?

 
Sam: Well, having never taken drugs I wouldn’t really know! But they give me that kind of transcendental, spiritual feeling I think especially from Joanna Newsome. I think that harp really gets under your skin and raises your hairs and things like that, so that’s nice. It sounds horrible but you know when you like obsess over eventually what song is going to play at your funeral? I do that all the time and The Talking Heads, David Byrne song was it for me, it’s like “Oh yep, this has to play at my funeral.” So yeah that’s a big thing to say I guess. It’s SO agony and what if people don’t know and I want to communicate it to them!

When do you find yourself craving music for relief?

 
Sam: I think my ultimate is like a long shift at work is over and it would be like 11:30 at night and it’s a spring night so it’s a little bit cool and windy and you roll the windows down (in the car) and I’d drive over the range back to my house in Samford and it’s just dark and it’s a forest with the music playing and it’s just amazing. This is just the ideal time but there are many others.


Where in life, home and your world does music take you?

 
Sam: Just away, I don’t know! I think anywhere that just lets your mind wander and have that peaceful moment. I often imagine I’m on the moon. Like in The Watchmen, I remember reading that moment when he goes to escape from humanity because it’s just all too much for his brain. I imagine myself on the moon looking back at the earth.

How do you share your music love?

 
Sam: I don’t know, I love sharing music, I always get a kick out of forcing it on to people, so yeah I use all the boring things like Facebook obviously and I always get a bit insane like if I go on three dates with someone I make them a CD and try and force it onto them *laughs*. It’s too intense, but any friends I love sharing music with them.

Learning is for life. Some accept it, some rebel against it, and some embrace it entirely. Music is a teacher like no other; it can be, as it is for Sam, transcendental. It shows us how to own our identity, how to tap into our imagination, it opens our souls for searching and gives us idols we as humans love to worship in one way or another. Music for some is a completely religious experience…music can take you to the moon.


I shall dub this ‘The Meditation Effect’. Music allows us to reach a certain state of being which is physical, on this plane of being, whilst simultaneously being completely out of body. It can take us on a journey, which is completely ours alone, drawing us into ourselves and focusing our attention on those aspects of life, which are really important. From this inner perspective we are able to project and teach and interact in a more positive way with those around us. Music is all the religion Sam and I need. How about you?


Doctor Nayt’s prescription this week (imagine my voice is like Karen Moregold, the horoscopes lady) is to go on a drive, possibly after a long, hard day’s slog in the office, out in the fields, serving customers or whatever it is you do for a crust. As you drive, keep an eye out for a large tree, one large enough and suitable enough for sitting under and seeking internal enlightenment. Once you’ve found this tree, sit under it and seek internal enlightenment to the chanting of your favourite musicians. Delve deep inside until you feel a separation from body and mind, and process the happenings from your physical day. Let the bad things fall away around you until you are left feeling open, freshhhhhhhh and enlightened. That’s it! You’re practically a philosophical transcendental being! The end.