Good Morning Heartache

Being a therapeutic musician is a daily exercise in opening old wounds. Ask any artist and they will tell you their most authentic work was born from some sort of powerful, emotional event. As a therapeutic musician it is my job to be authentic or I am not doing my job. People lie, but energy never lies, and I am trained to create an energetic space filled with peaceful, comforting qualities. You can't fake peace. So everyday I prepare my keyboard and silently open the space where I keep my broken pieces and I say hello. I remember them, one by one, and in return they reward me with the haunting but primal feelings of what it means to be alive. It is in this profound and lonely space that energy takes form into sound, sound waves travel in the air to meet human energy, like a memory runs to meet a feeling. For what are memories but locked up energy of experiences that reming us of what it feels like to be happy or heartbroken, validated or ignored, connected or lonely. Dead or alive.

Oddly, this daily act of self-inflicted pain is also my release. How wonderful to have a job where you are forced to face your fears every day! No hiding. No holding back. You can't push it under the rug and then go back to it three years later and try to deal. You deal now. Unlike so many, many people, I do get to experience peace every day, at least for a little while. Because I cannot give away what I do not possess. If I don't have peace to give, I don't have peace to create a place for you to find some peace. So, as the Billie Holiday son goes "Good morning, heartache. Sit down."