ARTS RECOVERY COLLABORATION: WELL BEING

Soon I will have completed about 50 years of contact, planning, and implementing a new idea for an academic structure. My work shifted from composer to creating curricula anticipating the media and technology explosion that began around 1968. Now, in September of 2018 that chapter of my life at New York University will come to a close.

I am somewhat surprised to still be here, because in my fantasies, I always thought I would have been gone from this existence by now.  I speculated over time when the end would come. In my teens, my heroes were Gershwin and Mozart. Both died at 35. I said to myself, "Fine, I will live passionately and when I'm 35, I'll be gone.

But when I turned 35, I was surprised to see I was still around. What should I do? Plan my life for retirement? But frankly at 35, I was in the maelstom of sweeping academic and administrative changes at the university. In addition, I was in the midst of sponsoring an on-campus festival and symposium in collaboration with Keyboard Magazine that introduced to the world the new breed of low-cost synthesizers that led to the revolution of musical practices and styles of the 70s. We turned the entire Education Building and Student Union into rooms that hosted manufacturers and their equipment, and artists in special workshops, with performances by luminaries, in what was later named Loewe Theatre, each evening of the three-day extravaganza.

Since I was sill around, I thought maybe the end woud come at 50, then at 60, and then surely at 70, so I never really planned for retirement. But as 80 approached, I began to realize maybe I wasn't going to die in the job.  Is there life after 80?

One of the joys of working in such a dynamic department where we had managed to attract so many energetic and visionary faculty was my relationship with the Music Therapy Program when I served as Chair. I had helped the former Chair in setting up the new program, and we brought in a talented and visionary person to lead the program. As consistent with our other programs, our Music Therapy departed from the prevailing model in Academia, so much so that we left the existing association and created a new one. This was through the initiative of my mentor and Chair, Dr. Jerrold Ross who had been responsible for bringing me to the department to develop new and innovative programs.

During my tenure as Chair, Barbara Hesser, our new Music Therapy Program Director initiated retreats in the Catskill Mountains on Panther Mountain near Phonecia, New York. My first experience with the retreat was so memorable that I composed an interactive ensemble piece based on the happening of that week together with so many creative artists.

I travelled to the retreat with colleague and philosopher, David Burrows, whose book Time and the Warm Body, remains one of the most original treatments of Time that I have encountered. I remember him saying, "John, these people know something about making music that most of us do not know or understand."

The Panther mountain facility was beautifully designed and we lived in dorm style rooms. We could make our own meals or purchase simply-prepared snacks or meals. We had to clean up after ourselves, and there were many rooms where we could separate in various configurations as needed and congregate together as a group. There was no set agenda, except to share and to have conversations and mini-sessions that were like informal workshops.

Deep in the forest was a Sanctuary shaped somewhat like a teepee. A large circular building narrowed like a funnel as you looked upward, culminating in an opening at the top where you could see the sky, or stars at night.

On the first night we gathered in the sanctuary. Those of us that had instruments brought them and put them in the center. We gathered into a large circle so that everyone could see each other and the instruments in front of us.

In the sanctuary, in the middle of the forest, underneath a starry sky, we sat in deep silence. After a while, Time became irrelevant. We no longer sat in silence... we communed in silence and communed with silence. I became deeply aware of our breathing. It was almost as though we were all drawing the same breath. After more than an hour I could hear a low voice intoning a sound as though breath had discovered tone. Gradually everyone joined.  Toning began to follow contours, and then melody emerged, almost as though this communion had summoned the power of music. For the next two hours there wonderful textures, melodies, emotions created as an ensemble, but punctuated with solos, duos, trios, and other configurations expressing full joy and utter despair, pain and gladness, anguish, and delight. The improvisation created its own form and after about two hours, it returned to silence. We sat again in the circle, silent, but somehow wholly fulfilled. After a few moments we began to talk and share our experience.

The retreat was all about making music together spontaneously and then sharing our work from the past year.  Everyone was exhausted from the demands of rigorous programs in the different parts of the world, so as we shared and interacted, we found that the process we were undergoing Became a profound healing experience.

From this experience, the idea of ARC (ARTS RECOVERY COLLABORATION) occurred to me as a possible focus for what I might implement in the future. An Arc is a symbol of connecting. Maybe it is ARTS RENAISSANCE COLLABORATIVE, or ARTS RENEWAL COLLABORATION... but the idea of reaching out and connecting with colleagues in the arts at the end of the year to celebrate and recover seems like something worthwhile to do, taking my inspiration from what I encountered in Phonecia almost 40 years ago.