I'm a Music Therapist

I went to a StorySlam at The Moth last night for the first time and it was amazing. When they announced that next month’s theme is “Song” this story immediately popped into my head and I felt this magnetic pull to put my name into the hat to tell this (true) story. We will see what next month brings and whether I muster the courage to tell this story to a room full of strangers, but I wanted to share it here:

She looked at me and said, “Your gift is music. My gift is prophecy, and I’m having a vision about you right now.” I’m a music therapist and have worked and conversed with hundreds of people, but this comment knocked me off my feet. We were in a hospital room with her dying husband and I had just finished playing music for them.

The woman went on, “I see you up on stage. You’re performing a song you’ve written. I think you’ll be writing the song soon, maybe even after the new year. When you’re done, you’re coming down to thank everyone. I see you handing out CDs, but you’re not charging anyone. They’re all free.”

I’m as open-minded as the next person, but I wasn’t sure what to think. Really, she can see my future? and then, What if she really is seeing my future? I thanked her and asked if there were any other selections she and her husband wanted to hear. After the session was finished, I drove home feeling oddly vulnerable. Had this woman seen a part of me that I wasn’t able to see? Her eyes were so confident and luminous, that I felt I had an obligation to write a song that night. Except for one problem: I’ve never written an original song in my life.

I’ve written songs with cancer patients and with groups with early stages of memory loss, but oddly I’ve never written a piece in my own voice. My songwriting process up to this point has consisted of parody songs that borrow a tune and re-write the lyrics. Songwriting from scratch seems daunting and the few times I’ve tried, I’ve drawn a blank.

Then, I started feeling guilty. My job is to be a creative mediator between a client and the art form of music. I felt like a phony music therapist because I wasn’t comfortable with songwriting myself. How can I offer a musical experience to a client if I’ve never had the courage to go through the process myself? This is a tough question.

Surveying my life, I noticed that my priorities are far off in the future. Someday: I want to go to grad school, I want to save money, I want to research. I had the next five years planned out, but the next five days’ priorities weren’t as clear. I spend a day after work going through my email and watching TV and then I might get to practicing or being creative for its own sake.

Working as a music therapist is hard work. You’re on, you’re improvising and responding and reflecting others’ thoughts and feelings everyday. It’s no wonder I wanted to get away from the thing that I was entrenched in. I use music as a tool, but who wants to bring work home after an eight how day? Music had somewhere along the way become work.

This realization made me queasy. I didn’t want to do this to my relationship with music or to myself. I didn’t want to rob music of the joy and the inspiration it had given me my entire life. And I carried this uncertainty with me for months after I had been given my prophecy. But it wasn’t until I had the obvious insight to ruminate about this with a guitar in my hands.

Then it came to me: C-Cmaj7-C-Cmaj7-am-F-fm-C. And as I played this chord progression I gave myself permission to do what I ask my clients to do every day: Be open and trust the music.