I begin the drive into the bush early in the morning, as the sun pokes its head above the city horizon. It"s a little misty and my car warms up slowly in the Australian winter air. I thank God once again for the invention of the iPod and head for the highway. The first part of my journey swings around a major ring road and I drive past a combination of industry and ever-burgeoning outer suburbs. Within forty-five minutes I am free of the flat, grey metropolis and my car is roaring up into the Victorian highlands. It is increasingly green and undulating and I change my music from the contemporary attitude of Lily Allen (2009) to the remorse of Jeff Buckley (1994). The first black gum tree stumps soon come into view and I begin to focus on my purpose. Within in the hour I will have arrived at a small, local high school and teenagers will be arriving at the music room door constantly throughout the day. As I drive, I notice the progress being made on the new houses that are being built to replace those burned in the Black Saturday fires. I am amazed at how healthy parts of the bush look. The re-growth covers the blackened wood and the road I travel seems mostly untouched by the tragedy of last summer.
I turn off the highway and onto a country road, and as I begin to wind through hills I access memories of previous weeks to remind myself of exactly what lays ahead today. I flick through my iPod one more time and locate the songs the young people have chosen to perform – a combination of reproductions and original compositions. "Self Esteem" by The Offspring (1994) blares out of my speakers and I sing along with gusto (having warmed up my voice much earlier in the drive). Then "You make me happy" (Drew, 2009) chirps out, and the simplicity of its catchy melody and lyrics makes me smile as I realize that I have learned the words without even trying. I then listen intently to the original songs we have recorded. I have to strain my ears to hear our home recordings above the engine, which further intensifies my listening experience. I listen, sing, drive, absorb the view, and prepare myself for the exciting and relentless day ahead.
I have been traveling to this small country town for seven weeks now, working alongside my colleague Kate Teggelove, who organised the project. Kate was contacted by a local Mathemathics Teacher who was desperate to find some way to support the teenagers in her school. Kate wanted to help, and sent out an email to music therapists she knew that worked with teenagers, myself amongst them. This did not happen as immediately or independently as the response of our New York colleagues after September 11th (as described by Dorit Amir, 2002). To some degree, bushfires are an expected part of the Australian summer, so they did not elicit emergency responses from the music therapy community. But these fires were particularly devastating (see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Saturday_bushfires for details) and I recall thinking that I would love to make a contribution some time down the track, when all the support began to wane, as it inevitably did. So when Kate emailed with the project my response was immediate, and I continue to be grateful for this opportunity to "do something".
My experience of working with these young people as they grapple with the repercussions of surviving the fires has been heart-warming at many levels. It strikes me as the kind of work that makes theory truly come alive as a reflection of practice. Before beginning I had absorbed myself in Julie Sutton"s book on music therapy and trauma (2002) and worried about the possibility of re-traumatisation. I had contemplated the relevance of community music therapy theory (Pavlicevic & Ansdell, 2004; Stige, 2003) and considered how this work might be different to conventional music therapy, with its treatment plans and anticipated outcomes. I had revisited my favourite influences in the form of Irvin Yalom (2005) for his advice on working with groups as well as Andy Malekoff"s (1997) approach to the whole teenager, positioning myself as an adult who is open to having some fun, as well as being able to hang in there and not lose hope. I was thoughtful but not prescriptive in my preparation. I had never been involved in responding to a trauma and my instinct was to follow the lead of the young people; to be comfortable with waiting.
Theory did indeed become reality in working with these teenagers in the bush. Kate and I proceeded gently, allowing them to direct the pace at which we approached the topic of the fires, and it varied between groups. We took an ecological perspective that focused on the young people as located in their context: as teenagers, in the bush, part of a community that was trying to rebuild post the fires, but also part of the futures they were trying to create at the same time. The progression through stages of group development was mostly predictable, to the degree that an abstract construct such as "group dynamics" can be understood as real anyway. We have formed, normed, stormed and are now focussing on performing (Tuckman, 1965). The pace and methods have varied between groups, but the usual suspects of group improvisations, song playing and song writing have been the mainstay, varying dependent on the ability of the group to articulate their experience in any given week. Ultimately the whole group has decided to create a CD, which is a fairly common outcome in community music therapy practice in Australia (see chapters by Toni Day and Emma O'Brien in Baker & Wigram, 2005). And we have had a lot of fun. There has been plenty of laughter, moments of touching sadness, surprising levels of honesty, and an extraordinary capacity for creativity.
In some ways it has been a unique opportunity. In others, it has been classic music therapy. It makes me reflect that there is a core truth to music therapy. Not a positivist truth that is stable and inflexible, but a crystallised truth that can be viewed from various perspectives. In the moment of doing and being with clients in music therapy, it is much the same. The theoretical standpoint can vary significantly. The context even more so. The age of the client. Their degree of difficulty. The age of the therapist. Their experience. Gender. Culture… But in that moment where music therapy works, the experience of connectedness and creativity feels the same for me. It is not quite a peak experience in my role as a therapist (Maslow, 1968), but my awareness of time is diminished and I am truly present and focused on "being with" the group (Rogers, 1961) in making music. It is extremely rewarding and distinctly familiar to my experience of doing music therapy. As one of the original lyrics suggests:
Though my skies are turning to grey
I"ll be okay
If I can just say "I love you"
At the end of the day I race back to my car and head home with an optimistic hope of getting there in time to put dinner on the table for my own children. I reverse my musical journey, starting with Gregorian Chant (Turco, 1993) until the urge to sing returns; then it"s time for some Sarah McLachlan (2001) and ultimately P!NK (2006) as I hit the Ring Road and join the masses driving home. It"s a heart-wrenching journey alright. I couldn"t do it without the music.
Allen, L. (2009). It's not me, it's you [CD]. London: EMI UK.
Amir, Dorit (2002). What is the Meaning of Music Therapy These Days?. Voices: A World Forum for Music Therapy. Retrieved from http://www.voices.no/columnist/colamir140102.html
Baker, F., & Wigram, T. (Eds.). (2005). Song Writing Methods, Techniques and Clinical Applications for Music Therapy Clinicians, Educators and Students. London: Jessica Kingsley
Buckley, J. (1994). Grace [CD]. New York, NY: Columbia.
Drew, C. (2009). Happy!. Burbank, CA: Loveway Records.
Malekoff, A. (1997). Group work with adolescents. New York: Guildford Press.
Maslow, A. (1968). Toward a Psychology of Being. New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons.
McLachlan, S. (2001). Remixed [CD]. Vancouver, Canada: Nettwerk Productions.
Offspring. (1994). Self Esteem [CD]. Los Angeles, CA: Epitaph Records.
P!NK. (2006). I'm not dead [CD]. New York, NY: LaFace Records.
Rogers, C. (1961). On becoming a person: A therapist's view of psychotherapy. London: Constable.
Pavlicevic, M., & Ansdell, G. (Eds.). (2004). Community Music Therapy. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Stige, B. (2003). Elaborations towards a notion of community music therapy. Doctoral Thesis, University of Oslo, Norway.
Sutton, J. (Ed.) (2002). Music, music therapy and trauma: International perspectives. London: Jessica Kingsley Publishers.
Tuckman, B. (1965). Developmental sequence in small groups. Psychological Bulletin, 63, 384-399.
Turco, A. (1993). Adorate Deum: Gregorian Chant from the Proper of The Mass [CD]. Munich, Germany: Naxos.
Yalom, I., & Leszcz, M. (2005). Theory and practice of group psychotherapy (5th ed.). New York: Basic Books.
McFerran, Katrina (2009). A Journey Into the Heart: Music Therapy After the "Black Saturday" Bush Fires. Voices Resources. Retrieved January 15, 2015, from http://testvoices.uib.no/community/?q=colmcferran070909