'Invited by Music' Nuggets

What does ‘invited by Music’ mean? How can music invite? Who does it invite? What happens if you accept the invitation?

The conversations that surrounded the making of the film “Invited by Music” were full of nuggets that answered these questions. The context for many of these conversations is The Bonny Method of Guided Imagery and Music which is described on my web site. And yet, there is a sense in these conversations that Music invited these persons to more than their imagination or their therapeutic growth through the Bonny Method. In this excerpt from a larger interview, you will get the sense of what I mean.

Lindsey Beaven, Marriage and Family Therapist, living in California, and working on her Ph.D. from Pacifica Graduate Institute.

“I took an early interest in classical music. I don’t come from a household that was interested at all in classical music, but somehow I found it. I participated in a modern dance class at the age of 12 or 13 and the teacher always used classical music. I really connected to the music. We would listen to a crackly record of a classical piece, imagine what it suggested and then dance those images – a bee, a bush, a wolf, the earth are some that come to mind. I learned that music is filled with images. The one constant from about that time in my life was how classical music just kept coming into my life. It was always very powerful. Now I recognize it as something that I was connecting with at a deep level even then. I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. But it did something with me and to me that other things didn’t. It has been a friend throughout my life. With all the ups and downs, there was always music to go back to.

“In one of my very early experiences with The Bonny Method, I experienced myself in a very different way. Right at the point when I was feeling not so great about myself, I felt as if I experienced something very core that was very alive. It was as if a lot of myself had died, and yet I found a very, very alive part. It was extremely exciting to discover it was there. This experience with music had an amazingly strong effect on me that I didn’t understand. And over two or three or four months, I suddenly realized there is something deeply spiritual in music. Now I think this was something I picked up in music all along, but I could never quite put my finger on. You know, when I listen to music, that’s the part of me that I feel. And so, it sort of all fell into place. And also my relationship with music was not this sort of sudden, quirky thing. It was really a part of me. My respect for music and my interest in it just got broader and broader. Music had enabled me to grasp that there is a gigantic universe inside of me that I had no idea existed before. I mean, I sort of thought I knew myself, but suddenly there was this huge thing that I would now call the unconscious, a whole new world, that I had never begun to look at. That was very exciting to discover!”