Let me not pray to be sheltered from dangers,
but to be fearless in facing them.
Let me not beg for the stilling of my pain,
but for the heart to conquer it.

- Rabindranath Tagore

Inspirational Music

Thursday, April 11, 2013

Magic in Music

I have been through a fair bit of hellish situations. I have scars and even still open wounds from them. My heart and my body are riddled with somewhat filled-in holes. My home, my family was torn to tatters when I was a boy, just becoming a young man. I have a menagerie of scars all over my residual limbs from so many sores that some scars are right on top of others. When I was still in Madonna Rehabilitation Hospital, I actually had such terrible scar banding in my left armpit that I could not raise my arm above 90 degrees for a few weeks. It wasn't budging; it was painfully obstinant in is lack of flexibility. One weekend, it just "released" and I could get my arm to close to 180 degrees. I had this thought today that music, in that it is incredibly cathartic to me, is similar to occupational stretch/massage therapy for my hearts scars. I use it to find my way to the source of the pain and to stay there a while. I feel the hurts and painful scars and try to just let them be expressed. I could look at it like I'm just opening old wounds, but I see it has keeping them open until they heal from the inside out. That's what I have to do if I have a infection under the skin on one of my legs. I have to pack it with this cotton wick-type thing that keeps it from closing and creating a void where infection can incubate. Doing this allows it to heal fron the foundation of the wound all the way to the surface of my skin. But, this cathartic experience is also like massaging old scars sometimes. I massage them with melody, knowing that whether I can see any change or not, at some point they will soften. At some point, they won't keep my heart from loving more fully and from being graciously flexible. In this way, I think there is a little magic in music.

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