Category Archives: Music

memoir-writing, Music

How Music Led Me to Memoir Writing by Robin Gaiser

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler /@kathypooler with Robin Gaiser/@RobinGaiser

 

 “Music gives wings to the mind, a soul to the universe, flight to the imagination, a charm to sadness, a life to everything.”  Plato

 

It is my pleasure to introduce therapeutic musician and memoir writer Robin Gaiser in this guest post about how music led her to write a memoir. Robin and I meet through a mutual friend who over lunch one day had mentioned she had a friend who was writing a memoir. After chatting on the phone, Robin and I knew we had a lot in common. Robin has a fascinating story to tell about how her ministry as a therapeutic musician inspired her to start sharing her stories. Her upcoming memoir, Doorways  is a work-in-progress. She has completed her first draft and fourteen of twenty-two chapters have been critiqued. She hopes to complete the critique process and have a polished final revision and a query letter ready by this summer.

Welcome, Robin!

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Robin Gaiser playing music for a client in her home.

 

 

How Music Led Me to Memoir Writing

 

As a therapeutic musician (Certified Music Practitioner) I am privileged to offer live bedside acoustic music to critically and chronically ill, elderly and dying patients in hospital, Hospice, nursing and private settings.  My fervor for this work has spilled over into writing a passionate memoir about these real people and their real stories as they face the unknowns of life and death.

 

Doorways (working title) takes the reader into these private and sacred lives revealing wrenching choices patients and their caregivers and families must make.  In the midst of it all I enter with healing music, its mystical and miraculous qualities flowing into these unknown, hurting places. Be amazed, be humored, be moved.

I tell these stories and my own in hopes that when our time, or those of our loved ones come, we may face them with wisdom, courage and love.    

 

Below find a short excerpt from a chapter of Doorways entitled “Last Words,” a collection of anecdotes about the value of honoring life as it comes to an end.

 

“Doug sat alone in his Hospice room seated in a lounge chair, staring out the window at the woods.  His door was wide open.  The TV was off, no radio played. He was not reading or working a puzzle or talking on the phone.  When I knocked lightly on his door he looked up with a response which surprised me. He appeared frightened, apprehensive about my presence.  His thick, quilted flannel buffalo paid shirt, his worn jeans, his tan work boots shouted the language of an outdoor laborer.  I looked more closely and saw missing fingers on the hand lying across his lap.  Lumberjack, I thought.

            The vast unforgiving Adirondack mountains harbored many a hard living man eeking out a meager wage in the woods just five hours north of bustling, crowded sophisticated New York City.

            I approached the solitary man slowly. Keeping my distance I pulled out my harmonica, showed it to him and began playing “Git Along Home Cindy, Cindy” an upbeat folk tune often played on hammer dulcimer in the lumber camps. He resumed staring out the window, expressionless. I finished the tune and let some time pass.

            I didn’t expect him to speak.

            “My uncle played one a’ them,” he said flatly, looking at me briefly, then turning his head to gaze out the window again.

            “You want me to play some more?” I asked. 

            “Yeah,” he said still looking away.

            I played several more camp tunes for him. When I stopped and put the harmonica in my pocket he looked over at me and spoke again.

            “When you comin’ back?”

            “Next week,” I replied.

            “Good.”

            The following week I knocked softly on his door hoping I wouldn’t frighten him again.  He sat clad in the same outfit, in his chair by the window, but his expression changed when he looked up and saw me. The fear, the reticence was not present and he even cocked a half- smile. I entered carrying my guitar as well as the trusty harmonica and sang country music as he listened intently facing the window with the view out to the woods. After several songs he spoke.

            “You know one about grace or something.’ My mama sang it.”

            I began to play the introduction to “Amazing Grace” and sang all five verses.  Even without looking too closely at the lone man, I could see tears form in his eyes as he swallowed hard.

            Weeks later during what turned out to be his final hour, I entered his room without knocking. This time his limp, non-responsive body rested in a Hospice bed. The hand with the missing fingers lay across his chest which was barely rising and falling with his strained breath. No plaid flannel shirt or worn blue jeans, no work boots were in sight. I softly played harmonica over him, remembering the shy lumberjack who allowed me into his very private life.

            The music I gave him that day was the last sound he heard on this earth.” 

 

                                    ***

Thank you Robin for giving us a glimpse of your work as a therapeutic musician and for showing us how it has inspired you to share the stories of the people whose lives you touched with your music. After reading this powerful excerpt, I am looking forward to reading your memoir!

 

Robin Russell Gaiser holds a BA in English from The College of William and Mary, an MA in psychology from Marymount University, and a certificate as Music Practitioner  from Music for Healing and Transition, Inc.  She has recorded seven Cds with the Mill Run Dulcimer Band, and three solo Cds honoring births of grandchildren.  She recently had a third short story published and takes classes through the Great Smokies Writing Program at UNC-Asheville. More details are available on Robin‘s newly published website, www.robingaiser.com

 

How about you? Has music played a role in healing for you?

 

We’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

Next Week,

2/10/14: ” 7 Memoir Writing Tips for Writing with Intention”

2/13/14:   ” From Insanity to Serenity”, a guest post on Janet Givens’ blog.

Creativity, Music, Writing

Music Matters in Memoir Writing~A Reflection

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Posted by Kathleen Pooler/@kathypooler

“Music is moral law. It gives soul to the universe, wings to the mind, and life to everything…Without music, life would be an error. “Plato, attributed

 

"Listening to Music" Galina Barskaya/dreamstimefree
“Listening to Music” Galina Barskaya/dreamstimefree

 

I have always been amazed at the ability of music to affect my mood, transport me to another time and place and help me connect to my own creative energy.

When I write about the past, I often tune into Pandora radio for whatever decade I may be writing about.

Okay, I’ll admit, I do often sing around the house, too. I usually wake up with a song on my mind and end up giving voice to it until it eventually dissipates as I go about my day. Here’s the deal- I can’t really sing but that doesn’t matter. I  do enjoy belting out the tunes to my audience of Rosie and Max, our Golden Retrievers and to Wayne, my husband who usually just smiles and shakes his head.

Music helps me to connect…

 

Music is a universal language:

The Italian tenor, Andrea Bocelli can sing to me anytime and I’ll understand his language of love. Here he is performing The Prayer with Celine Dion at the 1999 Grammys:

 

 

 

 

 

Music is therapeutic:

Think about the soothing background music played in the dentist’s or doctor’s office to calm you, or the use of music in hospice settings to ease pain and anxiety. Music therapy, also called” expressive therapy” is a part of any helping professions’ role in healing according to Wikipedia.

Power of Music by Louis Gallait. A brother and sister resting before an old tomb. The brother is attempting to comfort his sibling by playing the violin, and she has fallen into a deep sleep, "oblivious of all grief, mental and physical." Wikipedia/Music Therapy
Power of Music by Louis Gallait. A brother and sister resting before an old tomb. The brother is attempting to comfort his sibling by playing the violin, and she has fallen into a deep sleep, “oblivious of all grief, mental and physical.” Wikipedia/Music Therapy

 

 

 

Music is transformative:

It often transports the singer or musician to an altered state. Have you ever seen American cellist and virtuoso, Yo-Yo Ma in concert and seen the ecstasy on his face when he plays the cello?

 

 

 

 

Music reflects and defines the times:

Social movements are galvanized in the music of the times. Here’s Peter, Paul and Mary at a concert in Japan in 1990 singing Where Have All the Flowers Gone? It speaks to the pain and loss of the young men of my generation, the 1960’s, in the Vietnam War, and fueled the anti-war movement:

 

 

 

 

It is clear to me that music has extraordinary benefits to enhance productivity in life and in writing.

 

When I was thirteen, my parents encouraged me to take piano lessons. Begrudgingly, I’d sit at the upright used piano, pounding the keys, wishing I was doing anything other than that. Eventually, they let me quit, realizing I had no interest. As time went by, I began regretting that decision. For years, I longed to be able to play and dreamed of getting back to it someday.

 

After a trip to Missouri in 2006, when my friend, Mary Sue, sat at her Baby Grand piano in her Victorian sitting room with an upright piano and an organ, and mesmerized me with her piano music, I made a decision.

 

I would play the piano again.

 

As soon as I returned home, I went shopping for a used piano and bought an upright Kimball the same day. Soon after, I signed up for piano lessons which I took regularly from a lovely teacher, Sarah,for six years.

 

Now, let me be clear. I do not aspire to be a concert pianist nor do I expect to be able to play by ear as Mary Sue does. But I can read music and I can play for myself so that I recognize the tune. If I’m on a roll, others who happen to be in the vicinity recognize it too.

 

I play the piano for the sheer enjoyment of letting my fingers dance across the keys in a way that transports me and gets me in rhythm with myself and my creative energies.

 

When my friend, Marilyn, was dying of ovarian cancer in Wisconsin in 2009, I’d sit at the piano and play, visualizing myself connecting with her spirit. I couldn’t be there with her in person but I could play music in her honor. It was my gift for her and to myself.

 

On my parent’s 65th wedding anniversary in 2008 when I couldn’t be with them, I played Let Me Call You Sweetheart over the phone.
I stopped playing about a year ago listing a litany of excuses…focus on writing, play with the grand kids, do the laundry. I figured I’d lost my music…

 

So I sat down the other day and began playing some familiar tunes-Beauty and the Beast, Ava Marie, When Irish Eyes Are Smiling and guess what?

 

I got my music back.

My piano
My piano

 

I need to practice but as I finish the first revision of my memoir, it’s the least I can do to connect with my own rhythms so that what flows onto the keyboard will spill over onto the pages helping me to  connect, heal, transform and define the times and my story through my writing.

 

 

For me, music does matter in memoir writing.

 

 

 

How about you? Do you have ways to tap into your own creative energies? How do you get in rhythm?

 

 

I’d love to hear from you. Please leave your comments below~

 

 

 

This week:  I’m also over at Cate Russell-Cole’s blog, CommuniCATE with a guest post; “Confessions of a Memoir Writer”

 

 

Next Week: Memoir Author Pam Richards will discuss “Dare We Write About Miracles in Memoir?” Pam will be giving away a copy of her memoir, Singing From Silence to a commenter who will be selected in a random drawing.