From: slh@gtech.com (Sandy L. Haddon)
Subject: Music and Music therapy thread
Organization: GTECH Corporation, West Greenwich, RI
Date: Fri, 16 Oct 1992 17:12:32 GMT

Hi all.

I've been wandering the earth for a bit here so I haven't been around.
But it's lunch time now and I want to post something...

It's been a really awful week and I am trying to organize my self
into the functional person I thought I was, sigh, this stuff in
quite a roller coaster ride.  More on that later...I am typing at
home to get it into some perspective.  I will tell you that I broke
the silence with my cousin, was/am scared out of my self but am
hanging in with it.  I expected not to wakeup today alive but I 
was wrong.  I expected the "bolt from the blue" but I was wrong.
It's actually a relief to be wrong.  I will elaborate in a later post.

In reference to the chamber music and music as theraputic tool thread:

Ok!  Can I join too?  I have a copywritten anthology of my own folkish
tunes in the library of congress, I play 6 & 12 string acoustic guitar,
I perform (but I'm rusty <squeak,squeak>), I can ruin most anything
you give me on lots of instruments (flugelhorn, piano, hammer and mountain
dulcimer, trumpet, the most cat-like sounds from a clarinet on this 
earth!!) I figure that it's a gift :).  I sing (contralto...for real! a 
true contralto!)   So if I bring some toys, can I play too?  :)

Oh if you wish to hear my songs, I wish to share them with you.   So,
I will send you a copy but ... its that "I'll need your address" issue 
so if that isn't comfortable, I will send it to another person who can
give it to you, a church person or therapist person who must keep your
id safe or (my favorite) a p.o box, that's ok with me!

Isn't it interesting that we all seem to know how to use music as a form
of expression, escape, etc.  The arts are quite the place to find tools
for survival: reading, painting, music, etc.  But you folks all knew that.

Having majored in music at college and hoping to be a music therapist way 
back when it was only taught in a few colleges (set your watch back to 
1980), I thought that I had found a way to take what I knew on the inside,
combine it with what I learned in music and apply it to help others and
me.  Well, I were (sic) wrong, I never finished that course, decided to teach
it instead and all sorts of things happened but that is another story.

The way I use music is to help me feel the feelings.  For example:

When I want to feel ___insert a feeling here___, I listen to songs
that help me feel ____insert a feeling here___.  In this way, I can
amplify a feeling I am having difficulty with, of course this assumes
I already know that I want or need to feel that particular feeling :).

When I want to not feel ___insert same feeling here___, I listen to
songs that help me not feel __insert same feeling here__ anymore.
In this way, I can turn down or off the feeling if necessary.  This is
one of my survival tools for those overwhelming times.

It works for me.  Sometimes its the only safe place I can find, a 
closed room and a record player.  Sometimes I beat up on my guitar.
Sometimes I sing really loud, sometimes I don't sing and sometimes I
can't sing.  Sometimes I dance til I drop (but I close all the curtains
first so nobody can see...) and sometimes I lay on my floor in the dark
on my back and look at the glow in the dark moons, comets, stars and 
planets I stuck on my ceiling and listen to "space music" (example: the
song "Somewhere" on the Streisand Broadway album).  Sometimes I color with 
my left hand and listen to my "comfort" songs...ones that feel real comfy, 
safe and warm.

Music reaches a part of you that, IMHO, nothing else can get to, at times.

And that can be really good.

Hope you are all doing o.k.,

San (trying to stay caught up....)

Newsgroups: alt.sexual.abuse.recovery