music, therapy, and me

I took some time off from ripping music to my computer, but I am ready to get back and get going again. I brought one of my very large CD books down from upstairs just to see that it was the one I finished earlier. So, I am going to trudge back upstairs and get the others that I have to still go through. Three more huge cases and one smaller case to go - the smaller case has holiday music only, so it fits in the smaller case without difficulty. As I stroll through my CD purchases from long ago, I am constantly reminded that I really love all sorts of songs. It is difficult to name a favorite singer or group or song, but I do have my favorites. My music library is eclectic to say the least. Throat singers and monks through to rap and hip-hop artists. I have CDs from groups that made one and never were heard from again. I have recordings that are greatest hits compilations from artists that had long careers. The books of CDs that I have and continue to keep in my home even though there a...

So, I was driving home on Friday afternoon, and I passed two dead armadillos by the side of the road - they were about five miles apart, and I just started singing about them. I'll post the song somewhere, but it is just an absurd little dirge that popped into my head. That's how music happens for me. Things that endure pop into my head and stick there. I sang the song to my sister, and it stuck in her head as well, but she isn't singing the right melody yet. I will have to sing the dirge to her several more times until it sticks. I doubt that I will ever use the song in music therapy, but it fulfilled something for me. The lyrics are simple - Flat armadillo, flat armadillo, flat armadillo, flat armadillo by the side of the road. I also played around with some lyrics, but I didn't develop it any more. There are times when things just don't need to be developed into a therapeutic music experience. They just are. I haven't been taking the time to sing lately. I wi...

One of my quests for this year is to get back into listening to music again. It has been a long time since I have spent time listening just to listen. Since music has been my job, I go through periods of time when I just cannot listen to anything outside of music therapy sessions. I am missing music at the moment, so I am making an effort to bring music back into my daily way of engaging in life. I am ripping my CD library onto my computer, and I am rediscovering music that I have loved in the past. I loved the era of burning CDs, and I have lots of "favorites" CDs that I have found in my music library. I pulled out a CD case with "all-time favorites," made in 2007-ish. Curious to see what I loved back then, I popped it into my CD player in my car and have been listening during my commutes. One of the things that I can say with certainty is that I love much of the music of Garth Brooks. There you go. The music that I have included of his always makes me smile. so re...

As a vintage music therapist who has invested in records, cassettes, CDs, mp3s, and now streaming services, I have lots of music around my house. I have managed to give away most of my cassettes, but I have all of the records of my family as well as my extensive CD collection lurking in bookshelves in corners of my home. I have started the process of ripping my CD collection onto my computer to store that music on the cloud. This is not a process for the faint of heart, and it is taking lots of time. I have a CD drive in my computer - I bought it specifically because it had an integrated CD drive because this is a quest I always have at the back of my mind when I am purchasing things. I want to have my music available to me the next time I get a computer. This is a long introduction to the benefit that I am finding with this task. As I put on the topic line, I am finding old favorite songs again. Part of being a music therapist is a love of music, and I have many pieces that I have lov...

I figure that it might be time for a reintroduction to music, therapy, and me. If you have been here for a long time, then you know quite a bit about me. If you are a newer reader, then you may not know much about what I do, where I've been, or where I get my ideas. So, allow me to introduce myself. I am a long-term music therapist. I started my music therapy studies back in the last century, and I have been employed as a music therapist for 32 of my 34 years as a professional. For the other two years, I had job descriptions that were not specifically music therapist but in related fields. I have spent 29 years at my current job, working with children, adolescents, and young adults with developmental, intellectual, and psychiatric diagnoses. I work in a school associated with both local school districts and the psychiatric residential treatment facility where the school is housed. In that time, I have been through many policy changes, changes in the types of kids that we serve, and...

One of the advantages of going through my CD collection and ripping music to my computer is that I am being reminded of music that I have loved over my life and career. One of these songs is by Fiona Apple who was part of the "angry girl singer-songwriter" movement that happened at some point in my past. Criminal  is one of my favorites from Fiona Apple. Okay, let me explain something about me. I tend to find one song by an artist that resonates with me, and I then explore more of the music. I am not always impressed by the other songs that those artists share, but I have many CDs that I got because I wanted a copy of the one song that I love. I used to be part of a CD club - BMG got me many CDs for less than $2 each back when I was budgeting for everything - so I was able to find many of the songs that I loved back then for very little money. (I never really paid full price for any CD.) So, with Fiona Apple, I have a couple of songs that I like and more that I do not like as...

Part of my identity as a vintage music therapist is my CD and cassette collection. Now, I have purged many of my cassettes, but I cannot seem to get rid of the CDs that I purchased over many years. I use them in my car during commutes because wi-fi and data usage and all that is confusing to me (that's where the vintage label becomes VERY evident), so I prefer my music in tangible form rather than in streaming. So, I have book after book of CDs in my living room. The reason I bring this up is that the songs that I have been listening to lately are from yet another soundtrack - Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium.  This is from a sweet movie that discusses grief and creativity and love, and the music is wonderful. It is currently the only CD in my car, so I am listening to it often. I cannot identify a favorite track in the soundtrack. It all blends together nicely. There is only one vocal track, and that one is not my favorite. I enjoy the leitmotivs and the way the music flows. I r...

So... I feel like I need to be totally transparent about something from the get-go of this particular series... I am not good with identifying songs with their performers. I can't identify the song names, but I can almost always sing the song. As I was trying to figure out what song to select for this series, I remembered being in a session last week, listening to a song by Billie Eilish. I really liked the lyrics to the song, but for the life of me, I cannot remember which song it was. I remember thinking, "that would be a great song for our self-awareness monthly theme," but I cannot find the words that I remember in the lyrics search that I am doing of Billie's songs.  This is a common situation for me, but it's also common for my music therapy clients. We can remember things about songs but can't remember names or musicians. We spend lots of time engaged in clue hunting. I ask questions like, "Is the singer a man or a woman?" (I know, those aren...

I subscribe to Dan Rather's Steady newsletter - the free version - because I respect that man as one of the voices of my childhood. Mr. Rather replaced Walter Cronkite as the anchor of CBS news when I was a kid. My parents were diehard CBS news watchers because of Mr. Cronkite, and Mr. Rather became the new voice for a long time before my parents defected to NBC news and Tom Brokaw. Since I grew up with several voices in the news world, I have found myself gravitating back to those voices to help me make sense of the world right now. On Sundays, Mr. Rather takes a break from writing about politics and the state of the world to write about songs that he finds memorable. I like that, and I enjoy reading his words about those songs. I think I might start doing the same sort of thing on my blog - writing a bit about specific songs and why they are important to me. Now, I just have to find the songs... I was listening to songs that my clients were sharing this week, and I realized that ...

It is halfway through this season of festivities and stuff, and I am tired of it all. I went to do some laundry (because my room is currently 60 degrees and not getting warmer during the day so kids are bundling up in the blankets that I had my facility buy since they are not fixing the HVAC system AT ALL), and the COTAs were painting applesauce and cinnamon ornaments with students and they put on Christmas music. Now, I do not listen to much Christmas music during this season because it is everywhere and I get tired of it all. So, I was hanging out in the laundry area listening to this music and watching my students either protest or become so enthralled that they were not doing anything they were asked to do. I have three more holiday obligations to go before my holiday can start and I can flood myself with Christmas music. I will be able to listen without thinking about all the things that I need to do in the next 10 days because those 10 days will be OVER! I enjoy Christmas music, ...

Do you know how you can look at the calendar and see that it is already the start of the second week of May yet the amount of time that it has taken to get to this point of the year has been excruciatingly slow? Each week seems to drag on and on, especially around the Tuesday/ Wednesday mark, and the hours just seem to keep crawling by. Yet we are already in the last month of the regular school year. Already. Somehow. On this Sunday morning, I am working on several tasks simultaneously. This is my regular way of doing things, and I am comfortable with this type of process. I have been working on my new sing about edition, setting up the formatting, and figuring out templates, while blogging, watching Star Wars episode 1, and ripping CDs to my computer. I would like to have all of my music in one location, but I have not been able to sit down and get music onto my digital storage for years now.  Ripping CDs to my computer takes a bit of time. It is a repetitive task. Put CD in, wai...

I finished the book I was reading and synthesizing this week, and I am getting ready to read it again - not because it was difficult, but because I feel like I can really get my teeth into it through reading it with less demand placed on myself. It is time to get back into the idea that music has meaning to me more than just what I can do with it during sessions with clients. That may sound a bit strange coming from a person who is a music therapist, but I find that my own personal music consumption is low. I've written about this before - I tend to go towards television or movies rather than music listening for my leisure time. I listen to people speaking instead of listening to music during my commutes to and from my jobs. I prefer television shows and movies instead of my playlists. I miss music as something that I just immerse myself in as deep as possible. The book, Wellness, Wellplayed. The Power of a Playlist , by Jennifer Buchanan, is helping me figure out what is missing. ...

When I started this blog forever ago, I wanted to find a title that would help me focus on what I really wanted to write about - the complexities of being a music therapist in this world. There are three pieces of this blog, and I find that, for the past year at least, I have been focusing more and more on the last part of this blog title - the me part. I will still be writing about me - that's a part of this entire blog, after all, - but I want to also up my post count on the other two parts of this blog. I already have TME Tuesdays going, but I think I want to go back to what I used to do - offering ideas to you, fellow music therapist! I got away from that because I got sucked into some social media trolling that insisted that it was the responsibility of music therapists to give ideas and intellectual property to other music therapists without the expectation of payment. I find that I miss the opportunity to share ideas here, so I think I will go back to offering ideas - not th...