Music Therapy Tuesday

The fall season returns to the south. Hurricanes begin sweeping up from Cuba, and if they hit on the Gulf side, they are certain to bring rain even to Atlanta.

Another sure thing is all the obligations fall brings. For parents, it's new school schedules, from academics to athletics. At my parish, it means the summer break is over and new classes and committees take over. If you were voted to sit on parish council, the meetings are fresh and new and people stay over to chat and reconnect. By January, inevitably, most people are more concerned about getting home before the chill sets in. In September however, it's still warm after dark, so people stand in the parking lot in companionable clusters, solving the world's problems under the floodlights.

For me, fall is always a return to choir practice, each Tuesday night. They started last week, but I wasn't able to be there, so tonight was my return. I was struck by the community intertwined in the seeming repetitious drudgery that is Tuesday Night Traditional Choir practice.

The choir contains people from all walks of life, but I'll admit it, I'm the youngest. I am surrounded therefore by about a dozen older folk who love the sound of my voice and when I push open the doors each evening to enter the church sanctuary, I'm greeted with sounds of approval. "Hey! Laura's here." I'm sure this must irritate the choir director, who wishes it didn't happen every time (or that I'd get there early, heaven forbid). 

Afterwards, everyone wants to know just a little bit about me. "Oh, I haven't seen you recently, I miss you." or, "Well how's work, are you still okay?" or, "You look good, have you lost weight?" or, "How's your mother and father? Are they coming for a visit soon?" At one point in my life I would have viewed this as intrusive, but it's just natural to me now. They love me because I'm like a child they wished they'd raised but don't have to be responsible for. I'm not asking for money or needing a place to stay, so they think I'm pretty great.

But something else, very important, goes on during practice. I call it as music therapy. 

We were learning a new Psalm for the season, and it was in chant - a special style known as a Gelineau tone. I couldn't find a real Gelineau tone online, but this rendition is conveys the idea. Learning a new song always involves a process that goes something like this:

First, you stumble over each note, reaching for it, wondering where it is, waiting for the piano to find it for you. You get through the first verse and everyone realizes that you didn't know the piece, so the director instructs you to repeat it. On the second try, you do a bit better, but now the piano is distracting, and it changes notes before you think it should, and the two of you sound like you're competing to have a conversation, one trying to be louder than the other. 

Then comes the third try. You take a deep breath. You readjust your glasses. You hold the book closer. You know that on Sunday, you're going to need to stand up front of the entire congregation and deliver this song. You cannot count on the choir to cover up your mistakes. 

The world slips away in this moment. The other singers and the piano cease to be a distraction. You receive the opening note, and you anchor yourself on it. And the notes begin to guide you. Up-Up-Up-Down-Up. First phrase is done. Up-Up-Down-WayDown-Up.  

Oh, you've got it now. The entire phrase has a progression and a form. And the next phrase builds on the first, creating a tension, then resolving it. And so does the next. And so does the next. It's hard to explain, but the notes on the page suck you into them. You balance on them. You steady yourself on one note, then reach for the next. 

The concentration gets you through without flaw finally, and you are able to relax. The next time you sing it, you can even add some flavor, some color, rounding vowels, improving phrasing. 

And that's when you look up, and practice is over, and you realize that for a full hour and a half, you had no work to do but balance on those notes. No one called you. No one had a crisis. All your worries belonged to someone else. I'm not sure how your day goes in an average week, but to find something that distracts me from mine for an hour is a real treat. It's like a visit to a spa, only free. I walk out humming. I drive home humming. I fall asleep humming. 

A sponge bath for the brain. Rest for the restless. Music therapy.

--Laura