My grandsons, Ethan and Will, were nine and six years old respectively when I watched their mother interrupt a fight they were having. She had clearly done this before, and I saw that she had some skill in getting the boys to each look at the situation from the other’s point of view. After some discussion, she instructed them to each apologize to one another. Ethan, the eldest, went first. With his head cocked to the side, he said, “I’m sorry.”
Will came back quickly and strong with “Oh no, you’ re not! You’re just over there singing to yourself.”
I was able to stay in my role as fair witness, but it was hard not to laugh and somewhat agree with Will because I knew that, as a musically inclined child, Ethan did sing to himself often. I’ve always wondered if that’s how he keeps himself in such an even-tempered and emotionally positive place.
My grandsons are grown men now. There are many principles I hope I have shared with them, many truths I would like them to remember and embody, with one of the most important being that the capacity of music to facilitate a change in one’s emotional state is enormous. As we know from African American spirituals, known as “sorrow songs,” and from a more recent form of music, the blues, music can express for us the emotions inherent in our grief, and take us in a progression from negative to positive, from discordant to resolved.
Physician Oliver Sachs, author of Musicophia: Tales of Music and the Brain, reminds us that “music occupies more areas of the brain than language does—humans are a musical species.” It can be hard to find the right words to describe the progress on our grief journeys. Hopefully, most people know that the goal is not to “get over it” and “move on.” Sometimes we talk about “healing” our grief, but grief isn’t an illness, so unless we are referring to the trauma associated with some losses that needs healing that word doesn’t fit. Arriving at a “resolution” has possibilities, except that word usually means finding a solution to a problem or a puzzle. And grief, though it can be puzzling, is not a problem to be solved. As my friends, students and fellow interplay playmates have been teaching me more about music, I get excited by the possibility that music theory might have a suggestion for us. In Western tonal music theory, the term “resolution” is the move of a note or chord from dissonance (an unstable sound) to a consonance (a more final or stable sounding one). (Jett demonstrates on the piano.)
That fits with grief—a journey from and through instability to stability. That got me thinking about what music offers our grief journeys, not just as a metaphor but as medicine. Could music bring us through an episode of grief to a resolution, for now? As with other arts, can music be a vehicle to take us into our grief, help us process it, and bring us out?
Please join me as I will be meeting with some colleagues, artists, and musicians online this Thursday evening to explore answers to these questions. Western culture’s rule for human contact in adverse situations being some version of “Keep calm and carry on, and whatever you do, don’t become emotional –sets up a need for music to connect us with our emotions. On the path of good grieving, we must be able to recognize, accept and express our emotions. And to be good companions to loved ones as they grieve, we must be able to allow them to have and express their emotions in our presence. Opera singer Elizabeth Jett Downing will demonstrate how that’s done as she shares a tribute to tears, a lament from Werther Act III: music by Jules Massenet libretto by Edouard Blau, Paul Milliet and Georges Hartmann, 1892, “Va, laisse couler mes larmes, Oh, let my tears keep on flowing.”
Here is the link to the Reimagine online Art of Grieving event with a focus on Music as grief’s collaborator. https://letsreimagine.org/76768/the-art-of-grieving-series-music
See you there April 18th at 7:30 pm eastern time on the Reimagine platform.
Sheila
PS – In case you missed it, as of last Tuesday The Art of Grieving is available for pre-order on Amazon. Here’s the link: https://a.co/d/fCLchkf
