This quickie blog entry led me to this remarkable essay from a year ago by physician and writer Danielle Ofri. The publication is The Lancet, Britain's premiere medical journal, which has long included ruminations on medicine and life to compliment the double-blind clinical trials that are its stock in trade. This is not a music therapy piece per se, rather a reflection on how Dr. Ofri's life has been changed by taking up the cello as an adult. It's one of the best things I've read about music integrated into a whole life - music as it could be for more of us if it was not presented to us with so many forms of baggage. She writes:
I still love my ”day job”, taking pleasure in teaching students and connecting with patients, but I have to be honest that, at this point in my career, the sense of growth has remained at a relatively steady state. With music, however, the intellectual challenges develop in ways that are new and surprising to me. The trajectory of learning, of frustration, and of accomplishment for the beginning musician has more in common with the intellectual vibrancy of life as a beginning medical student.
Dr. Ofri centers the article on studying her first Bach unaccompanied cello suites, which I've long held as among the handful of the most perfect works of art ever composed. It feels great to vicariously weave through his spellbinding contrapuntal melodies with her. But she goes on to investigate the profound ties between music and medicine, between the spirit and the body corporeal. She gives me a lot to think about, in that my practicing is almost entirely dedicated to finding my voice as an improvisor, learning to make my guitar say what's in my head in real time (and to have better ideas), while she's taking the more traditional (and demanding) route of playing composed music and getting deep enough inside the notes to interpret them. She's on an important journey, and she shares it with rare clarity and insight.
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