TME Tuesday: It Is Happening...The Boredom Creativity Surge is Happening!!

I am currently in a place where I am spending more time watching interns than doing music therapy, so my boredom is increasing.

To be completely clear, the boredom is not at all due to what my interns are doing with our clients but with the fact that I am not doing much client interaction and am stuck in my office, listening and watching rather than participating...

The enforced decrease in client contact has the benefit of a surge of creativity that is happening right now. Since I am tasked with listening and responding via observation notes, I have lots of time to sit and think about music, about music therapy, and about what I enjoy doing. I cannot spend time working on my visual aid system really easily because I have to respond to session events as they happen, but I can write notes and jot down ideas for future TMEs while I am watching. I have one group to co-lead today and three groups to observe completely today.

This happens every time I have two interns at the same time. They take over my sessions, so I have to move into different roles and then my brain starts working in the creative realm again. I use NCR paper (not carbon paper but that works like carbon paper so I have a copy of the comments I give to my intern - are you familiar with it?) for feedback, so I write on the yellow copy (my version). When I write on the yellow copy, I do not transfer the information to my intern's copy of comments. I write down song lyrics and chord progressions and ideas for all sorts of things. Then, in a perfect world, I would immediately put those ideas and chord progressions and song lyrics into my TME book, but that step does not often happen. I will be working on strengthening that part of the system.

Yesterday's brain spark was a progressive songwriting format for my clients who do not verbalize. Each phrase requires a noun response and repeats until that noun is selected. Once the noun is selected, the musical phrase is complete and we move onto the next phrase. The song appears when all the nouns are present and tells a story based on selections from the group. I have done things like this with groups before, but I have never had a set melody or song to go with them. I have one now.

This is going to be a short blog post - I have about five minutes before I would get to work early and about 35 minutes before I would get to work on-time. I am trying to decide what I want to do this morning. If I had PT this afternoon (it was canceled), I would have to leave in 5 minutes, but I do not, so I can go whenever I want to go. In fact, I could be later today since I do not have to go to PT. I could wait for an entire hour and drive in the daylight. I may do that. In fact, I just sent a message to my interns that I will be later today. That is a nice option and alternative for me at the moment. I have an appointment for testing on Friday to see what is happening and why things haven't resolved after a month of treatments. I hope that we can see some nerve involvement - that would explain just about everything and would allow me to resolve some stuff. Knowledge is power, Ms. Lubarsky!!

See you very soon! I have to head over to another Google account and check email and write my responses to last week's Study Group lectures...