What was taken from you? Where do we get it back?

This weekend, we focused on soul: what feeds us, where we feel at home, how we connect to passion, to center, to power, to connection itself. As part of that, we talked about the thwarts to passion: what does your passion call you to do, and what gets our way?

An important learning from this was that most of the time, the thing thwarting us is not of us. We may have internalized it, sure, but it was something done to us. “Something taken out of my soul. Something I would never lose. Something somebody stole.” Or, something somebody put there, something that doesn’t belong, that we should never have been forced to carry.

Watching music wake people up

This past weekend, I had the opportunity to do something wonderful with the Back Bay Chorale – a great volunteer chorus I’ve talked about here in the past.  Under the auspices of their new Bridges program, we have been visiting nursing homes and assisted living facilities in small groups, singing well-known songs to seniors in

Why does music make us cry?

Everyone knows how a song can open us to emotion.  Most of us probably have songs that make us cry, songs that make us nostalgic for our youth, songs that make it impossible not to dance.  And as we go into the holiday season, there are doubtless songs that make us homicidal, particularly the ones

The art of asking

Amanda Palmer, late of the Dresden Dolls and ever-itinerant, fascinating, fearless musician and artist, did a TED talk in which she shows how she got people to pay for music in the digital age – by asking them. This talk reminds me how difficult it is for people to connect with each other, social media

Carmina Burana, the bombings, and being an artistic first responder

On Monday night, I returned to rehearsal with the Back Bay Chorale. We rehearse on Newbury Street, about a block from where the Boston Marathon bombings occurred, and since we rehearse on Mondays, last week’s rehearsal was a no-go.  But this past Monday, we were back, and our fearless leader Scott Allen Jarrett had some

The healing power of music

I’ve written here before about how music touches lives, opens hearts, and even brings back memory.  Music may not be entirely unique to humans, but it is definitely a primal need: throughout our history, music has soothed us, aided us in celebration and in mourning, been indispensable in our rituals, driven cultural revolutions, fueled protests,