Music as therapy and Re-birth

I posted a video in one of my last blogs that featured Sigur Ros. Listening to that song got me thinking about music and therapy. I know that Jon Orsi also touched on music and the effects that it has on a person and it reminded me of a conversation that I had last week with my therapist. Whether it is the music itself or the lyrics, music can have such a profound effect on people.

Ferdinand reflects this most beautifully when he hears Ariel’s song:
ARIEL
“Come unto these yellow sands,
And then take hands.
Curtsied when you have, and kissed
The wild waves whist.
Foot it featly here and there,
And, sweet sprites, bear
The burden. Hark, hark!”

FERDINAND: “I heard the music creep over the wild waves, calming their fury and soothing my own grief with its sweet melodies. I followed it here, or I should say it dragged me here. But now it’s stopped. No, there it is again.”

Music can be therapeutic but it can also be thought of as a remembrance. Music can bring a person to an entirely different place in their mind, creating images that were once behind those dusty, wrinkled veils. A name, a word, a tune- a remembrance.
I know that Jon was talking about a “re-birth” in his blog, which I thought was an interesting point, especially in music. I have always been a lover of music, but now I am constantly listening to sad songs that don’t allow me to grow, but to be stuck in the past. Music is a strong remembrance, memories I want so badly to let go of, but so badly want to hang onto. “Re-birth” is so cyclical. We are constantly being re-born by the things we hear, say, do, or see. Maybe I am the only one, but I have reached a point where I really thought that I had come full circle, a point where my own “re-birth” had taken place, but I find as time passes that the re-birth passed much too quickly and here I was again searching, waiting to be re-born. It also reminds me of the introduction to a CD by Alicia Keys, the element of freedom:

“And the day came when the strength it took to remain tightly closed in a bud was more painful than the strength it took to bloom”.

This for me depicts “re-birth” through beautiful imagery. Even those flowers have to die, to make way for new life…and so the process continues. Cheers to continuous re-birth.