A New Inspiration Book - Combining Music Therapy with Paper Crafts

I have always collected things. (I know, you know this if you have read my blog - I collect more things that is good for me.) One of the things that I love collecting is pictures that catch my eye. I have been putting them into a book that I use when I need some ideas for songwriting or therapeutic music experiences (TMES). The pictures are just things from magazines, but they are fun and inspire me to think about the stories behind the pictures.

Something else about me is that I enjoy making and filling books and journals. I've been thinking about combining my picture collection with my current love of making books and starting to make myself an inspiration art journal/glue book/junk journal. The purpose of this particular project would be to house these pictures to use when I feel blocked and unable to be creative. I think I'm going to use one of the books that I already have because I can't seem to find paper to make into a book big enough to house some of the pictures that I already have for this project.

So, making the book is a bit irrelevant to this particular blog. Let me describe how I use my pictures as inspiration...

Let's say that I am in a state of creative drought. It happens to me at times. I just don't have any new ideas for TMEs or songs or projects or crafts or stories at all. In these times, I find that giving myself structure and some rules helps me to build something new. I start off with my index cards, my keyboard, and a pencil nearby. Sometimes I roll dice to get me started - to choose my key, my melody line, the duration of notes. Sometimes I just choose one of my favorite chord progressions and I start to sign. Often though, I need a bit more to get my creativity flowing. I open up my book of pictures, and then I have more structure to help me write.

One of my favorite pictures is of a girl who is about seven years old who is caught in mid-jump on her bed. She has a mischievous look about her as she stares into the camera, and it seems like she is a handful. The caption is "Hurricane Nicky" and I think it was an advertisement for some sort of cleaning product (but I can't remember). The picture is the type that just begs for a song - a song about a girl who is constantly on the move and who is constantly finding new adventures. For me, it evokes a strong, consistent beat pattern in the accompaniment - something like my version of power chords - and verses that are different from one another with a repetitive chorus. Now, I don't know if this song will ever become a TME for use with clients, but I could do a bit of finagling and add in some coping skill discussion and processing to make it work for my current clientele.

I wish I could show you pictures from my book, but all the images are copyrighted so I don't want to tread into having to consider fair use and all that.

The best thing about a project like this is that it never really ends. I can keep adding pictures and thoughts as long as I can!

I think I need to write a song about Nicky now. "See" you soon.

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