The Journey To Know Where
The Journey To Know Where
The Song Remembers When. In 1993, Trisha Yearwood released this chart-topping hit written by Hugh Prestwood. Other than being a great hook, it speaks to something deeper. Music has a way of bringing us back. A 3 minute and 30 second shot of ourselves. When I met Ms. Hagan at the Westminster Commons Assisted Living Community, her 96-year old frame was beginning to betray her but she was still in there. She struggled with pain and memory, but she was still with us, just a bit harder to find.
Ms. Hagan changed when she heard the music. Or maybe she just became Ms. Hagan again. Time has a way of stripping from us what we hold dear. We have no choice but to let go of people and routines as we move down the path. Call it God’s cover charge. But if there is a cover, luckily there’s a smoking band. Music lets us be us where we are at. In a sense, it is the antidote for this rude thing called time.
Kally Ramminger, Board-Certified Music Therapist, is Ms. Hagan’s guide through this exploration. For an hour each week, Kally works with Ms. Hagan to wake up the authentic places that she holds dear. “During our sessions, we focus primarily on pain management as she has increasingly had issues with generalized pain in her body. However, there are times where she is oriented to time and place, and we are able to actively process through her life experiences using familiar music as the catalyst to these conversations.”
Music doesn’t lose its luster as time marches on. In fact, you could say that music’s beat is louder than time’s. Or maybe they are brothers form the same mother – The Universe. Scientists continue to push farther to explore the harmonics of the universe, aka, vibrations that the universe “sings out”. In The Republic, Plato spoke of the cosmos this way:
“Upon each of its circles stood a Siren, who was carried round with its movement, uttering…the concords of a single scale. The idea was that each sphere emits a sound with varying pitches, like thrown objects moving through the air.”
(Rock on, Plato)
Perhaps what we tap into when we “hear” a song is much greater than we can
understand. Perhaps it is one infinite, mystical, amazing
Journey To Know Where.