music, therapy, and me

It is Friday, December 8, 2023, and I am in a self-reflective mode. I have been properly awake for just over an hour now, so I have spent some time thinking and looking around my office area. I can see my current self-employment quests posted on the wall next to pictures of my father. I can see my covered crafting desk where I have not been able to craft for the past several months due to my finger injury. I am rewatching Hilda  on Netflix - a show that I enjoy. I am in a mood at the moment that encourages me to sit and think. It is time. There are many things to think about. I am ignoring as much of the news as I can - it is pretty easy to do. I know that being aware of things is good, but there comes a point where it is not healthy to only hear about the ways humans hurt each other. I reach that point very quickly, so I tend to avoid hearing the news. I read articles, but I do not watch or listen. This helps me think about the things that I can affect. I am thinking about work. I...

I didn't blog yesterday or the day before because I was sick and then just tired. It has been a couple of days since I've felt like writing, but I feel like I can sit down and think again, so here it goes. This morning, I feel the need to write something, and I pulled off a post-it note from my blog idea board. "Things I Care About in the Field of Music Therapy." So, here are some thoughts about what I care about in this field of ours. Music Therapist Longevity - One of the biggest questions I have had in my career is "why do music therapy clinicians leave the field?" We have always been a young profession. It seems that the majority of clinicians that are out there are still in their first years of being professional. About half of my 36 former interns have left the field but about half are professional music therapists, so I think that is pretty good. I just wonder what happens during the fifth through tenth year of a music therapist's life that tends ...

Today's Fiction Friday blurb is a short one. Let me introduce you to "the heretic." CHAPTER ONE The stories were always a bit too scary to listen to.  Earth Before had told us what was happening, but most humans couldn’t (or wouldn’t) hear the warning. It was almost imperceptible, but one woman, later called “The Heretic,” heard and wondered.  Intrigued? Keep tuning in on Fridays to learn how these three stories fit into my current world view and my thinking about things...

It is Friday again, so here is another part of the stories that I am writing. I call this part of the story the "D-flat" story line. (There are three story lines right now that will all end up being a part of the same book.) Let me know what you think, and happy reading! CHAPTER ONE - D-FLAT “Seventeen microtones from perfect,” Allia whispered in a hushed tone. “Can’t he hear that?” I shrugged in reply. My ear was not nearly as sensitive as Allia’s but I had good relative pitch. Allia had perfect pitch, so tuning came more easily to her than to me. Absolute pitch was all that was required to qualify to be a core tuner. Allia was ready to move from training to her internship. Me? My future was not so secure. I was sure I wasn’t going to move on into the next phase of core tuning. Alllia nudged my arm. “Are you listening to this?” She hissed, “he’s moving farther away from center. The is AGONY!” I shrugged again as my gut clenched. This final tuning test determined everythi...

This is the first of a new Friday series - Fiction Friday!! I have a bit of fun writing stories, so I thought that this would be something that I could share. So, let's start at the beginning...   CHAPTER ONE "Number 2427," Persephone whispered to herself as she walked through the masses of people and the hallways towards her designated entrance. It was orientation week, and she was trying to find her seat in the auditorium. To do that, she had to find the hall that linked to her section and row - she was number 2427, and that meant heading up about halfway up and a bit over halfway across the great building. There were so many people. Persephone had never been in a class with more than her sibling before. This felt like a small city full of people. Some were playing instruments. Others were singing in groups. Still others looked scared and skittered around the edges of the groups to get to their designated seats. That's how Persephone felt. After finally find...

My sweet girl in '17 Today starts my three-day professional development focus for this calendar year. I have not had much time off for professional development, so I am looking forward to an opportunity to pursue some music therapy topics and ideas that have been percolating. I am planning on spending most of the time between now and Sunday morning involved in vision development, product development, composition, and time away from everything.  One of the things that I am trying to focus on in the next several days is what I want to do with my intellectual endeavors for the next five years. I plan on retiring from my current job once I qualify for my full pension, so I have to start to think about what is next for me as a professional. I do not think I will be ready to walk away from music therapy completely after this job is over, but I am thinking that I will want to have more time for creating and consultation. To get to that point, I have to start some planning and routines now...

I just received one acceptance and one rejection for the World Congress for Music Therapy that will be held in Vancouver. British Columbia next July. I am a bit disappointed that I didn't get both ideas accepted, but I am happy to be leading the one that was accepted! I am happy to be a workshop presenter with an audience of music therapists from around the world. My last World Congress for Music Therapy was in Brisbane, Australia in 2005. I gave a workshop there as well. My sister invited herself along on the trip (after not inviting me, but going with her best friend to Hawaii the year before - yep, still holding onto THAT one, sis!), and we spent two weeks in Australia together. We took advantage of a trip package that was offered by the conference coordinators and went to both Brisbane for the conference and Sydney for purely touristy reasons. It was mostly a good vacation, but hormones arrived and complicated the end of our vacation. (I did get to go to Hawaii with my sister ...

I am currently in a bit of an existential crisis. It's not a huge one, but it is something that I am really thinking about...and have been since this COVID thing started way back. Now, you may be thinking, "Oh, no. Here she goes again," or you may be thinking, "What's this all about??" Of course, you are probably not thinking either of those things. I am projecting my own thoughts onto you - bend to my will - Mwa-ha-ha-ha-ha!!! Sorry. Let me get back to my point. As I have been going through this COVID pandemic, I have been thinking about the future of many of the institutions that we rely on that have had to change because of the virus. I have been stating since the start of all of this that we will have to change how we learn, how we teach, how we interact, how we do therapy, and how we teach others how to do music therapy. To this end, I have been writing some fiction about music therapy education in various times in the future. I am also preparing a conf...

It is early on this Sunday morning, and I am sitting in the semi-darkness, wondering what to write about. I have a blog post title generator that I occasionally use to help me find a way, and this was the suggested title that caught my fancy - Will Music Therapy Ever Rule the World? Ooh, boy! Here is my completely unsolicited opinion that has nothing to do with what you might think but is my right to hold and espouse to anyone who listens. Feel free to agree with me or disagree with me. We can debate this until the cows come home, if you would like, but I am just as entitled to my opinion as any one else is - and I will fight for the right for you to offer up your opinion, even if I feel that your view is incorrect (again, in my opinion!). Are you ready? Here it is. No. Music Therapy will never rule the world. How can it? How can music therapy, a profession which is growing in awareness and acceptance, be something that is universal? There are several things that are keeping us from wo...

  I am currently in a stage of nostalgia and attempts to distract myself from thinking too much about the past several weeks, so I have been thinking about our technological advances in my lifetime and in my parents' lifetime as well. I was watching a documentary that came up on my YouTube suggestions list (I wonder why this came up for me...I haven't been looking at these types of things before...) that was narrated by Walter Cronkite (famous newsman) all about predictions about life in the year 2001. It was interesting to see what folks thought would be happening in that year, long gone now. Some of the predictions were correct, some didn't happen until later, and others were completely wrong. This interests me - I am a person who thinks about the future of music therapy on a regular basis, so any sort of futuristic predictions are part of that construct. One of my escapes over the past week has been writing a story. I am writing a book about music therapy (sort of) in a ...

So, I am going to go with it. I was thinking that it was time to get back to writing a bit more about my ideas of the future and of music therapy. The cat, of course, stepped all over the number pad of the computer and now I am going to write something about 5/4 time. That works. Here we go... CHAPTER SOMETHING OR ANOTHER - PUT INTO SOME OF THE "CLASS" OVERVIEW SECTIONS "5/4 time," Persephone was muttering to herself, "What can I include in 5/4 time??" Persephone turned to her music database and started searching for songs that she could learn for her Repertoire class. She had been assigned the meter 5/4 in class on Monday and had to find a list of songs suitable for her clinical population of older adults by the next Monday. She had to find the sheet music, practice transposition, and learn the melodies to present to her small group cohort later. The good part about this project was that they were all sharing their lists so she would end up with song reco...

So, here is the story as I have it so far. I'm adding and tweaking things as needed to make the story work. Please note that this story is not based on real life events and exists only in my own mind.   Meet Persephone. She/Her/Hers is a 22 year old future music therapy student in the year 2049. She has spent most of her education learning about music and human systems, including some work in sociology, anthropology, psychology, biology, anatomy, neurology, and all of these courses again focused through a musical lens. She has spent little time in the actual presence of her classmate cohort and her professors. She spends most of her learning time in front of her hologram - it's similar to what her grandparents talk about when they describe "school," but it is not the same. She has finally finished the first part of her studies, is getting a degree in Music Psychology, and will be starting an in-person graduate training at one of three university progra...