I took my harp to a party: but nobody asked me to play.
March 31st 2008 03:32
Signature Tune
When I met her and she spoke of her singing harp, I was skeptical. "It's my smallest harp," she said. "Whenever I put him in the wind, he'll feel the wind in his strings, and he'll sing. He's done this every time, except once.
"When my cat died a long time ago, in the grieving process for the cat I decided life is too short. I'd always thought about playing the harp, and one morning I woke up and said, 'Now is the time.' I got a harp and a videotape and taught myself to play. After I had the rental harp for about a week, I knew I'd found what I was supposed to be doing.
Hix, who lives in Ellett Valley, discovered the Music for Healing and Transition Program, a national nonprofit that "professionally trains and certifies musicians to provide live therapeutic music," according to its Web site.
"I took the course of study and found that it was the type of work I was supposed to do," said Hix, who also works a few hours a week in Virginia Tech's computer science department.
At that moment, her harp began to sing. From its strings came a stirring, haunting sound, with pitch and intensity varying with the breeze.
The music program takes Hix and her harps to ill and dying patients.
"I was on the staff at Montgomery Regional Hospital for several years and played one-on-one for individual patients. It is not a performance; it is not entertainment. This is a therapeutic modality. It's a service we provide to create a healing environment.
"Music can bring the patient's breathing and pulse into the rhythm of the music. Music is melody, harmony and rhythm, and so much of the body is about rhythm: the heartbeat, the digestive process, brain waves, breathing. All those things are rhythmic. Very simplistically, when you play something with an appropriate rhythm, the body does something called entrainment; it matches, or entrains with, the rhythm of the music to bring the body back to homeostasis.
"I've played in the ICU when the patient was hooked up to a monitor where you could see the quantitative physiological effects of the music. The patient may have had an erratic heartbeat, and the music, played at 60 to 80 beats per minute, would bring the heart rate to a steady rhythm. When they're conscious, they can see the effects themselves on the monitors. I remember playing for a man who had been writhing in pain for hours. The staff had given him repeated doses of morphine. After I'd played for him for 15 minutes, he became completely still and quiet, appearing to be largely pain-free. The nurses were flabbergasted. I was, too, frankly.
"I've learned lots of 'head things' and 'heart things.' The 'head things' are about the profound effect music can have on the body. Kids don't know what they're doing to themselves when they drive around listening to that really loud, obnoxious music. Every cell in their bodies is vibrating that same way. Their brain, their organs, everything is vibrating with that harsh music. Our bodies are not supposed to work that way.
"The 'heart thing' is the realization that this is my purpose in life; it's why I'm here. Being with ill and dying patients teaches you how to live."
Just after the shootings at Tech on April 16, Hix took the suggestion of a friend she met through the music program, Sue Hoadley, and went to campus to play.
"It was Sunday after church; I went over and sat under a tree near Ambler Johnston. The students were returning and some of their parents were with them. Sue had said to me, 'Play with the intent of bringing some light to that dark place.' As I was walking from the parking lot, carrying the harp, not really knowing where I was going to play, there was a strong wind. I thought to myself, 'Oh, he's just going to sing and sing and sing, because he does that in strong winds.' I sat under a tree and held him in my lap and he was stone silent. Not a sound. He should have been singing, he would have been singing. I sat for a while. It was obvious there was so much sadness, that space was so sad, he just couldn't sing. I played for a while and hopefully provided some light."
Michael Abraham grew up in Christiansburg and lives in Blacksburg.
These things do not need formal study to establish them as part of someone's research, they just are.
I do hope those who perpetually damage their ears with their endless musical ragings read this and learn something about themselves which may prove helpful.
We live in a nasty world, things are not going to be improved by endless listening to that all too harsh blaring unmusical songs and beats.
Everything has a time and place, but that loud music has a limited space in which it can be of any use at all.
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