It seems to me that the only way I want to live is in faith. Faith outside of all religious contexts, in the most basic sense of the word, simply trusting that all of these small, pointless things we do are in fact building something larger. Every artist knows this – spending the hours creating something, bringing sounds or images into life, putting so much energy into something that may not last a day, that no one else may ever experience. It is an investment in the potential for a more loving, connected world.
I am lucky that my life revolves around these small acts of faith, although it is so incongruous with the majority of this culture that I slip into someone else’s eyes sometimes, and look at my days with incredulity. What is it I really do in the hospital? If I’m not a music therapist, if I can’t quantify the work I do with patients, how do I know anything I do is helping these kids? And as for my own personal art, why am I recording out of my bedroom and not chasing a record deal? Why am I writing what I feel, and not the formulaic sounds and words that I know will work?
Last week in the hospital, I encouraged a teenage patient to try writing songs – that it would be silly at first, but it turns into a lovely way of expressing oneself. A while later, she asked if I wrote songs, if I would play one. I played her Snakeskin – a song I wrote in high school about turning into who we are through constant change and renewal; a song that, appropriately, has always felt true whenever I come back to it. It took me a few days to even appreciate the beauty of that moment, when my lost 17-year-old self could reach out and touch another lost 17-year-old girl, because I was so terrified of having done something wrong. I knew how serious conflicts of interest can be, how careful I have to be not to promote my music at work. I took care with how I answered her questions about how to listen to the song again, directing her to sites where she could listen and not buy. I made sure to connect it back to her, telling her I wrote the song in high school, before I was even singing for people. I still worried for the rest of the week. Coming back to it now, these systems just seem so stupid. I write music to heal myself, and I want to take it to others, and even though I know my day job is not the place for that, it just seems unfortunate we have to be so cautious when we have so much to offer each other.
I don’t know if that song changed her day, made her think differently. Or if either of those things would be positive. (I still worry that she might have taken something away from it that was damaging in some way, just as anyone might.) I don’t know how much these Taylor Swift and Justin Bieber songs stay with kids, if singing and playing a drum really makes anything better for them. But I feel their joy in these moments, and I feel sparks in my chest sharing it with them, and I believe these moments are making something bigger, just as the pages of written and rewritten verses, the nights taken to record and re-record a single voice part, all of this is wondrous in its own right and vital to this life I am building. My faith, my investment in people’s ability to fully love is manifesting in my unquantifiable, unproductive hours doing what I do. I hope to someday be completely unapologetic for this. I am taking small steps.