My first blog post! How open I feel to be here– thinking, writing, and sharing. I hope this space will serve to create, connect, and inspire. It is my beginning intention to reflect upon myself, my work, and the larger world. Particularly, to explore how music helps us to make meaning, and how the experience of music, sometimes in the service of helping, transforms, and imbues me, and my clients, with a renewed sense of purpose and hope.
My earliest conscious memory of music was the comforting sound of a foreign language, spoken by those whom loved me more than life. I can remember fading into sleep, and waking into the day, hearing those sounds, their timbre, inflections, nuances, cadences– their music. It was different from the language I was developing to understand-English– yet perhaps more intimate. It was a primary language of love before I had words with which to respond…
Reflecting back on my own beginning and upon my earliest salient experiences in music, I know that I was sung to as an infant. Possibly before that, but maybe not, as the unexpected loss of a very close relative occurred a few months before my birth and enveloped my family in grief. That music, the music of sorrow, pierced its way into my being, sensitizing me for a lifetime. That music attuned me to suffering, difference, circumstances not asked for, loss. That music motivated me to help…
What do you remember about your first music? Can you still hear it?
Thank you for reading and until soon, listen to the music…