In some of the units, we talk about music having an influence on and at other times we talked about music being expression of, but particular your work I think captures so powerfully the way that we are musical beings, in some ways. Just wonder if you could say a little about that. Yeah, so I distinguish between music and musicality. >> Great. >> So it is also important at this point to say it could have equally been called communicative danceacality. But there is no such word. So I went for communicative musicality. And also, my background is as a musician rather than a dancer. But it's pointing to the way we shape time together. The way that we create narrative experiences just by being with one another. So, as I look at you, as you interact with me, so your eyebrows are going up and down. So you're swaying backwards and forwards a little. As you talk, and indeed as I talk, I'll be emphasising certain words. My voice, my pitch will go up, my pitch will go down. And all these, what Daniel Stern would call, vitality contours, they're expressing my vitality, some energetic quality of my being, through time. And I, and many others would argue that lies at the basis of how human beings, it lies at the basis of human companionship of why we enjoy hanging out with each other. And it also underlies, I belief on music therapy works. And also underlies a big part of, I think, why any sort of therapy works. Because it's tapping into the way that the mind and body interact with each other. Through time, through irregularity of timing and through the ups and downs of the energetic quality of any direction. So as you say, we're all musical beings and music is an expression of that musicality. Music is audible body movement. And so, electronic came along, music had to be made by body movement. Perhaps movement of the voice, perhaps [SOUND] tapping the desk. And so, as I tap on the desk there has to be muscular action that causes that and there needs to be intentionality behind that muscular action. And I chose, this is coming through [NOISE] if I do that. >> It does. >> Okay, maybe too loud then, okay [LAUGH]. So [NOISE] that convey something different to [SOUND] to that or, [SOUND]. There's a different feel to it. And also as, between those slower beats, it's not that there's just silence, there's also the raising of my hand as I prepare the next down beat. So, music is something that is physically created. And so, I and Colwyn and Danston and many others, and John Blacking, if he was still alive, would say that it's an expression, it's a bodily expression of the way I'm relating to myself and others. That's the attraction of why we like to listen to music. We're hearing human vitality expressed in sound. >> Mm-hm. >> Just as we see, human vitality expressed in movement if it's a dance, or human vitality expressed and frozen in time if it's a painting or a piece of sculpture. So I would maintain that we're seeing the structuring of that through the movement of the paintbrush, through the movement of the hammer and chisel that created the sculpture. And part of what we are appreciating, not just the cultural symbols that they're picking up through the piece of music or dance or sculpture of painting, but also feeling the human vitality they created in the first place that was moving through time. The way it was captured in a moment, in a painting or sculpture or is reproduced through time in dance and music. >> So, it makes me wonder about how then can we use music to foster relationships. Because I know in your writing, you've talked about how communicative musicality is much more than mimicking. Because people can use music and gesture to kind of manipulate a sense of relationship between people by copying, by, if I were to move exactly in time with you, there is a certain synchronicity which occurs. And that's obviously a little bit controlling or manipulative, whereas you're work has been very much about two people, expressing themselves musically. As a baby and a parent do, if the intention of having positive relationship encounters. So what do you do in your work to use this way of thinking to foster relationships? >> So by work, I'm assuming you're talking about my work as a psychotherapist. >> I am [CROSSTALK], yes. So, everyone I believe wants to understand themselves. It's an inherent human trait that people wish to understand themselves and their place in the world and we can end up doing a whole lot of things to distract us from that question because question might be uncomfortable. Nonetheless, I think there's a drawing into that question. And as, what I'm about to say happens in whole other area discussion, but I'll say it nonetheless. >> Mm-hm. >> As a colleague of my said, the system want to know itself. And the system being myself as a multipart individual. Both multipart in terms of my physicality, but also multipart in terms of my psychological make up. But also the system turns to society, any grouping of people that system wishes to know itself. There's like a drawing in to that, for the system to understand itself. Which is why I'm inherently an optimist. Is that there's a draw down into the wish to understand what processes are happening and how we can better operate in the world. So if I can bring my focus to the way that myself and someone else, in this example I'm thinking of the client, a therapy client or a client, of how that person is navigating their way through time in the way they speak and the way they move their body. And if there's a haltering nature to that, or if there's a start and stop nature to that, or if there's a flowing nature to that. Or if some particular vitality, to go back to Daniel Stern's work, so that the vitality's very up and that's up all the time. And so, just as if a piece of music were up all the time, it could get a little tiresome, it could get one dimensional. And so, my thinking is if someone's vitality is up all the time, well some move to balance that is being blocked somehow. So it's my role as part of the system, having noticed that part of the system of two people in this case, of myself and the client, how do I engender movement that creates better balancing in the self of the client and also, between us. >> Yeah. >> So maybe there's a path, maybe there's an aspect of the person they want to express which is more young. Maybe it's about sadness, maybe it's just about rest. It doesn't have to be sadness it could be they want to rest. Maybe people who are listening to this know people who are all up all the time and they work highly energetic and those sort of people can be quite fun to be around. But our physiology and or psychology, we need to rest sometimes. Just as a piece of music needs to rest. The piece of music isn't just the notes, it's the spaces between the notes and an energetic section of the piece of music is even more energetic and wonderful because of maybe a calm section that has come prior to it. And so, that balancing move gives us a sense of satisfaction when we listen to a piece of music, and I would maintain that sense of satisfaction is also something that can be felt within us when we also have that balancing move. And I, as a therapist or a coach, can help someone to move through that balancing motion because I, as someone who is part of the system, might sense some imbalance there. So I'm not separate from my client, I am part of the system of my client. Together, we are creating without joint musicality. And if I through my awareness can sense some imbalance in that, then I can maybe comment on that, I can maybe hold myself in a certain way that might work with that. And you mentioned earlier, that mimicking is different from the exchange of affect that can occur, so, the exchange of valid, on ethics through vitality contours means that I take something into myself that the person has expressed. It might be as simple as that movement of the hand. So I take that in, I then might deflect what the person with ‘Ah’. And might be through my voice falls in my hand. Through the change of modality, I haven't simply mimicked, I've changed it a little, just to the fact, it's gone through my own internal world and then back out again. So, this part of myself that has interacted with the self of the client who's given me that little gesture. And so, we ask, I go back to the term again, we are shaping time together. And if we can shape time together in a way that is, what I would call healthy and balanced, then that's going to be good for everyone. >> Yeah, so the nature of therapy and the way you are describing it is really about how if people are able to have an authentic experience of being heard and of expressing themselves in therapy then that leads to positive changes in other parts their lives because they are able to be more authentic outside of that relationship as well and that's how music, musicality leads to change. >> Yes, yes. The musicality is, that's why the term musicking is a good one. Which often is used in music therapy. Because musicality is a noun. And nouns are very deceptive. It makes us believe that things are static. I was writing a chapter with Colwyn recently on beauty. And the opening sentence is something like, beauty is not a noun, it's a verb. It's something that is longingly created. So, just as musicking is something that we do. And so, if the changes that occurs in therapy can also occur outside of therapy with a good friend. So, I talk about the importance of companionship with therapy. Whether it be music therapy or talking therapy, art therapy, any sort of therapy. It has a sense of companionship between two people and any restrictions on expressions start to get worn down through the waves of musicality that can allow things to start moving again.
