December 2011

You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December 2011.

I’m sitting here, processing in music and art, the passing of Clive Robbins. I am more deeply affected by his passing than I might have imagined. He was my teacher for a semester at NYU. He was also a colleague – I stood in and lectured for him at Nordoff-Robbins once, in the same lecture series that I’d once sat as a student. But I didn’t know him socially, and am not sure that he could have remembered my name had he bumped into me. However, whether he ever knew it, his life and work has touched my own beyond what words can possibly say.

I am spending some time in music, contemplating his indelible mark on me and the profession of music therapy, and the world in general. As I contemplate him, I can’t help but see his spirit, emanating in yellow rays against a bright blue sky. And as I think on both him, and Helen Bonny who passed away last year, I realize why I am so moved by the work that they both pioneered: they were deeply spiritual people and this showed in their work. This is so clear in Clive’s autobiographical writing, Journey into creative music therapy. And was clear to anyone who met him. Why is it that we have so abandoned the transpersonal in music therapy, for the safety of the biological, measurable, quantifiable? There is nothing easy or safe about exploring the transpersonal aspects of music therapy. Every movement into the transpersonal creates more questions than answers, but Helen and Clive dared to do this.

At a presentation Clive gave a few years ago, with Paul Nolan, Clive talked about “committing to beauty”. I find this brings tears to my eyes as I write the words. What a call to action! Commit to Beauty! Wow – it gets me every time. I hear Clive asking this of all of us, not just as therapists, but as human beings. Clive embodied beauty – he was beautiful in his words, in his passion, in his commitment and generosity, in his focus, in his humor, in his innocence and fearlessness. He was a magical teacher, someone who helped me commit to this work and all the depth of experience it brings.

As I have been sitting here, I am struck by the realization that Clive’s influence runs deeper in my life than I had previously made conscious. He changed my life about 20 years ago – in high school I learned about Nordoff-Robbins’ music therapy through a news segment. That news segment inspired my dream of being a music therapist all those years ago, leading me eventually to study at NYU and be taught by the man himself. It never occurred to me to go anywhere else. Clive is why I came to this field, and the reason I studied in New York. I’m just sad that I’ll have to continue my journey knowing he is no longer in the physical world.

I remember him as being so emotionally alive. I carry that image in my mind, and hope to emulate his emotional-availability and willingness to be moved by life. Thank you Clive.

Tags: , , , ,

On our June vacation last year,  to the Pacific Northwest coast of the US, and a weekend spent in Massachusetts, I was delightfully thrown into nature. On a walk through the Hoh Rainforest (part of the Olympic National Forest), I was struck both by the silence and the sounds. The coast gave me the roar of water. The trees brought the sound of birds, and leaves being blown like the sound of a blustering river. And I became aware of the huffing and puffing of my breathing as a struggled up a hill, and the floating voices ahead of me and behind me, being carried by the wind.

This trip was like a vacation for my ears – on my return, I could hear everything anew again. The sounds of nature have a way of re-setting our senses, readying us for our return to human-made sounds. John Cage has written about his experiences of listening after sitting in meditation. He has explained how meditative states can help us to stop reacting in our usual way to sounds, and just listen. With this fresh hearing, even the sound of a car alarm can become like a sound sculpture to our ears.

There is inspiration for me as a therapist in this reflection about Thich Nhat Hanh, the famous Vietnamese Buddhist monk : “Even under the sound of helicopters – and this is a man who buried many children in Vietnam to the roar of helicopters and bombs – he can say, ‘Listen, listen; this sound brings me back to my true self’” (Nachmanovitch, 1990, p. 93).

When I am with my clients, I am listening as deeply as I would as for the sound of a rare bird in the forest. I am listening as deeply as I would for the buzzing of an insect in the night air. I am listening as fully as when I lie down in the dark and take in the roar of the ocean. Even the most traumatized sounds can be sculptures of sound. When was the last time you were listened to as if you were that bird? As if you were the ocean? Don’t we all deserve to be heard as if our sounds were works of art? The sounds we make – our voices, our music, our words – are as precious as those sounds that fill our natural world.

Tags: , , , , , , , ,

Next time you sit down at a piano or pick up an instrument or open your mouth to sing, try this:

  • Play
  • Listen so deeply to the sounds – focus your entire mind on the sounds.
  • Don’t hold on to maintaining one sound or melody or phrase. If the music should lead you somewhere else, follow.
  • Notice when you judge yourself, and recognize that you can start again in the next moment, without judgement. Each moment of sound is new. Allow yourself to be present to each moment, without worrying about how you got there or where you are going.
  • Feel the music so deeply.

This approach to making music is really about giving yourself permission to to be transformed by it. It’s about deepening your relationship to yourself through the music. Have fun playing!

Tags: , , , ,