As I read the personal account of Lisa Wersal's experience of using music as a catalyst in her own healing, I realized just how much common ground exists between the author and myself. Lisa writes of being diagnosed with chronic diseases that interrupted her daily life, and how she latched onto the work of songwriter David Roth to help her begin to cope with the reality of her condition.
In the Christopher Small book titled Musicking, the author infers that musical experiences are entirely relational. He suggests that a person is drawn to a particular type of music because it reaffirms the relationships which that person experiences - relating to self, the natural world, society, etc. Music has the ability to reinforce our own perspective of the world.
I agree with this way of thinking. I can remember high school English teachers coaching my classmates and I in our creative writing efforts, the best advice being "write what you know." This seemingly simple phrase has stuck with me over the years, ringing like an alarm in the back of my mind whenever I get stuck with the question "what should I write?" Writing is about communicating ideas, and we learn to communicate so that we can express ourselves, our needs and our responses to the World as we perceive it. When broken down that way, it only makes sense to me that we would be drawn to music that identifies or reflects our relationships.
As I entered my fourth year of undergraduate coursework in music therapy, I started to accept the reality that I am not invincible. It's a difficult truth for me because I am still young, and I would like to think that I cannot be stopped in my radical ideas for changing the world. As a teenager, I was diagnosed with a chronic genetic disease (with no known cure) that causes muscular numbness, weakness and pain, among other symptoms. While rehabilitative therapies, medication and dietary modifications have done a reasonable job of controlling the intensity of the symptoms, I am still faced with days when the symptoms interrupt my daily life to the point that I feel useless, insignificant, as though I am failing miserably, losing in this war I have waged against the disease inhabiting my body.
Lisa Wersal changed her relationship with music in the midst of her illness. After being a listener for years, she switched gears to become a participant. Though I have been studying and performing music since I was a child, it was not until I was forced to recognize my own disease and its associated limits that I began to explore my relationship with music in a more intimate way.
Songwriting has been my musical catalyst for change. Though some days I may not be able to walk across the room, I can still hear the melodies and find the words to compose my experiences into songs. There is a healing element in songwriting, just as there is healing to be experienced through every relationship to music. Being a participant in music making has allowed me that outlet for expression, a means of relating myself to the world around me, to the people around me, and to the music that connects us.