Author: Erin

I adore challenges. Usually, however, I take too many on at any given time, and then I over-commit myself to groups or projects, and then become distressed later on to find that each needs things from me. Then I become demand-resistant about everything (demand-resistant is a truly exceptional way to describe me, most of the time, and its concept comes from one of my favorite blogs, “The Happiness Project”).
I get too excited about too many things at once, and typically I am passionate about very few things– however, those few things, when they come to meet me, are all-encompassing. I love it, but I am unrealistic about the hours in a day.
One challenge that is inviting and also does not take any extra time or energy, other than the mental energy it requires, is to see people as humans before anything else. Ironically, I feel I have no trouble doing this with my patients and clients. I honestly do try my hardest to view them as people, with fantastic, phenomenal histories, before people with a disability or disease. However, with other people, people I do not treat in music therapy, I have the hardest time seeing in any other way than being identified as a group member in which I meet them. For instance, I went to church this morning and someone sitting in front of us introduced herself to my boyfriend and me following the service. The first thing I thought was, “Oh man, she’s going to try to convert me or preach to me or something along those lines…” Granted, I have had a tumultuous relationship with religion, and the majority of people I come to know as being church-goers usually make me hesitant to trust that they will let me think as I may about religion and the church. But I should have recognized this sometimes-irrational prediction, and given her a chance before making that judgment. (As it turns out, I did leave our conversation thinking that she was on the other end of the spectrum as me.) I challenged myself in going to the basement for a brunch the church was giving. Almost always I leave immediately, but I wanted to see if I could connect with people I find, frankly, threatening. My boyfriend and I sat at a table with a family we didn’t know, and, per usual, I sat back, absorbed and considered the people around me. They all talked about church, of course, which is exactly what usually lends itself well to silence on my end; if I don’t know someone, and if they’re talking about something about which I know very little, I’ll let them talk it out until there is something to which I can relate. Sometimes the part about finding something to which I relate doesn’t happen, and instead of putting in my work and exploring a different topic, I just pout and let it lie. (I know, how infantile, but people exhaust me.) This morning, I didn’t. Even though they talked about church, and though I initially had little to say, I figured out something that could engage them and integrate myself into the conversation.
So hard. I wonder why I feel so differently about my patients and clients than I do anyone else.

I read the following poem by Robert Frost, and it may as well have been written about a client I saw yesterday.

In Neglect

“They leave us so to the way we took,

“As two in whom they were proved mistaken,

“That we sit sometimes in the wayside nook,

“With mischievous, vagrant, seraphic look,

“And try if we cannot feel forsaken.”

with scarf & skinny bones

Now that I have had opportunity to realize my power, I am finding the ability within myself to generalize this power into parts of my life that aren’t directly related to my internship. For instance, tonight my boyfriend and I went rock climbing for the first time in months. The total experiences I’ve had rock climbing is four now, and especially after having months since the last time, I semi-expected I would have some trouble simply getting on the wall. I prepared myself, though, in an entirely different manner. I was intentional about creating the experience as being on my terms and withholding from concerning myself with other climbers’ and acquaintances’ potential judgments of my climbing. I reminded myself of the reasons I chose to climb, and recognized that the act was a choice on my part. My choice. Most importantly, I was able to work from my own bank of knowledge concerning rock climbing, and then add to it by experiencing another night of the sport. Climbing is all about the legs– I use my arms too much, but my legs are strong. My task now is to integrate their capabilities.

I wonder if playing an instrument is akin to growing out your hair– there’s only so long you can grow it before it breaks off. I’m hoping that my creativity isn’t like my thin, dry hair; my violin playing is at a plateau in the band I play. Maybe this is because my violin concentration now is to facilitate movement of clients I have, or to distract my patients from pain; I don’t play to perform or express myself. I never have, really. I sing for that reason, but I have never gone to my violin for any reason other than A) I have to, so that I don’t entirely embarrass my mother at my next lesson, or B) to assist someone else in some way. Certainly I think of my violin as a family member, one who has grown up with me and has sat idly by when I neglected it for years. I don’t think of it as a source of expression. I think of it as a dependable friend, or a horse that’s out to pasture– I can go get it when I want it, but mostly it’s just stagnant and bored with me. There is so much more within my violin, and I feel badly for not drawing more from it. I feel that only a small percentage of its potential has been realized, and that I am disappointing it with my plateau.

A patient I had today told me that there are two reasons we die. One is because our bodies literally break down and are no longer able to withstand the stress of sustaining life, and the other reason is because our ability to tolerate and adjust to current societal norms and new generations breaks down and is no longer able to withstand the stress of sustaining life. She was annoyed, shall I say, with the “throw-away culture” in which we now live. I had a fascinating hour and a half with her. I hope to see her again, but I doubt I will have that luxury.

Some time ago, I had a short conversation with an art therapist that proved to be one of the most important exchanges I’ve had with someone else, in terms of my musical and personal/professional development. We spoke for maybe 15 minutes, but I continue to remember fondly and excitedly our discussion. Having never met her before, and never again seeing her, our meeting was and remains uncomfortably enlightening.
We spoke about Suzuki. She asked what led me to music therapy, and I briefly described my musical history and the fact that performance wasn’t, for me, all that music could be. (In the future, I may describe here what music really is to me.) In providing my musical background, I included the all-important fact that I began playing violin at the age of two (nearly three, though I don’t remember it at all), and that I was instructed in the Suzuki Method. I saw the art therapist’s expression change, almost sour, and she said, “I played Suzuki violin, too.” She went on to relate to me her experience in uncanny likeness to my own. She started when she was three or four, played all the way through high school, and then promptly gave it up. My story is a little different in that I played into college, stopped for a few years, but then did again play violin when I started my music therapy coursework. What was exceptionally bizarre about our conversation was that she told me that she has never attempted to play another instrument because she gets alarmingly frustrated with her inability to simply know how to play it shortly after coming into contact with it. She told me she doesn’t know how to learn to play it, and gives it up quickly. She pursued another kind of art.
Clearly she does know how to learn. She got herself through an undergraduate and master’s level education, and was at that time an art therapist. She knows how to integrate knowledge and put together abstract concepts. And I, too, know how to learn. But what I found so striking was that she was iterating to me my frustrations, I just didn’t know at that time to what to attribute them.
In my life, Suzuki remains a very powerful character. My Suzuki instruction itself, my teacher, and my mother shaped my life before I was able to contribute. Suzuki did much to facilitate my ability to perform and be a public speaker, and it provided for me poise, even when I was a toddler at a recital and didn’t know why I was standing before an audience. I owe a great deal to my Suzuki education, but unfortunately it has dealt me some frustration as well.
Like the art therapist with whom I spoke, I become supremely agitated with myself when I cannot play an instrument the way I can play the violin. As a music therapy intern, I need to be competent and functional at both guitar and piano. I am not competent at either, though I’m trying to believe I am functional at them. My point is that because I started violin at such a young age, I don’t remember the learning process. I don’t remember teaching my body the mechanics behind shaping my hand to finger certain melodies in a given position. I don’t remember the physical discomfort of that type of learning, but more importantly, I don’t remember how long it takes to learn a given task. So now when I approach a new song or a new instrument, or a new skill of non-musical sorts (to a certain extent), I cannot remember how to learn it.
Now I need to teach myself patience with this, I’m supposing. I need to teach myself how to learn, gracefully.

A few days ago, one of my colleagues looked at my keyring and made the comment, “There is no way you need all these keys.” Deciding this statement to be a challenge, I chose each key, one by one, and described to him why I need them, even on a daily basis. This led me to think about the number of places I go, and why I feel the need to have with me, at all times, all of the items I keep close at hand. As the number of keys I keep is large, so is the amount of luggage I have surrounding me on any given day. I have both a guitar and a violin, and soon a keyboard, that live with me essentially wherever I go; I have two different bags of music, depending on which instrument(s) I’ll be using; I have a bag of personal effects; a bag of internship-related binders and books; and even a second bag for hospice-related binders and paperwork. And in my car with me, I keep my three books of CDs. Some of them I have stored on my computer or elsewhere, but most I do not. Should they be lost or stolen, I would be heartbroken; that music is compacted memories.
On one of my drives today, I wondered why I feel the need to keep all of these things with me, at hand. Surely, some of these things could be left behind by some people. I think I keep the important material objects so close to me because I’ve never felt at home enough anywhere to believe I could leave anything safely. I have always been nomadic. Hopefully, this is changing.

I am four months in to my internship now, and I am ready to make money doing what I do.  I feel independent, for the most part. I feel that I do what I do when I need to do it. This is not to say I don’t need support from supervisors and peers, but it is to say that I am ready for the challenge and change of being a professional in music therapy. I am ready to see myself through this oncoming transition. I have always been impatient (though I do enjoy delayed gratitude), and this impatience is more present today. I have some fantastic relationships with patients, and I will dearly miss them, but I am interested in moving farther forward.

I don’t think of my own physical comfort as being all that important. Maybe that’s odd. However, I now know that physical discomfort (even if it’s not severe, acute pain) affects all things. I know, this is obvious. I need to experience things before I really have learned them; I am an experiential/kinesthetic learner. Anyway, here is the list of things I like and enjoy:
1. Showers, or being and staying clean (I’m talking clean-clean– I don’t like when my hands are dirty or when I spill on myself. Luckily, my mother did not pass her spilling gene to me.)
2. Being dry (I can hardly stand it when my hands don’t get entirely dry after washing them, or when my sleeves get wet when I’m washing my hands.)
3. Being very warm. I really dislike being chilly in the least.
4. Eating. Yet I rarely set aside time to do it.
5. Sleeping. But I feel so guilty when I nap. I think last weekend was the first time I’ve napped in a long time.
6. Using lotion.
7. Using Chapstick/lip balm (I don’t like the word “balm,” but at least I don’t have to speak it here. “The weather is balmy.” Gross.)
8. Reading. I rarely do it.
9. Writing. This, I do. And I think I’m happier for it.
Hmmm. I should prioritize these things.
Thanks for reading.

I was privileged, again, to attend a concert given by the Minnesota Orchestra tonight. The concert was entitled, “Osmo Vanska Conducts Future Classics,” and was the final event of the week-long, tenth annual Minnesota Orchestra Composer Institute.
I am thrilled and again amazed by the tremendous talent shared by the orchestra members, the conductor, and the new composers. One composer was only 20 years old. Some favorite pieces were “Winter Bells” by Polina Nazaykinskaya, “The Body Electric,” by Clint Needham, and “Mutatis Mutandis,” by David Weaver. And “Namaskar,” by Narong Prangcharoen. And all the others.
As a dear friend of mine reminded readers in her blog, music is truly a component of our brain. Why else would someone, somewhere, so long ago, decide that he or she simply must build a box that would resonate in such a way as to create what we know as music? What would possess such a person to do something like that? Why is it that we are so strongly compelled to create music?
I don’t know, exactly. I’m sure I could find in my reading a solid physiological explanation for these questions (anything by Daniel Levitin, Oliver Sacks, or E. Thayer Gaston comes to mind). But I do know that I respond very viscerally to the sound of that orchestra, and to those people playing those boxes of wood with their surprising, athletic dexterity.
Thanks for reading.