Excerpt 1
Barbara F.--”Possibility”
Actress, poet, parent, maker of things and connector of people, Barbara F. tells a story about her car breaking down one night while traveling in West Virginia. It was late, she was on a deserted road, and all of a sudden the muffler and tailpipe on her ‘98 Toyota Corolla broke and started dragging. Barbara got out to reconnoiter. She knows nothing about cars, but could see what had happened: she could also see she was going to be stuck alone there, possibly for quite some time, unless she took action. Scanning the contents of her car to see what might be there to work with, her glance landed on her leather purse. Emptying it, she then used its shoulder strap to tie the dragging metal up high enough so that it would no longer drag, closing the rest in the trunk to act as an anchor. Car thus patched, she drove on, heading to a nearby shopping center in the morning where she bought a socket set and a few other tools, and, relying on her attentive eye and her own good sense, repaired it enough to finish her business trip and get home.
Resourcefulness is essential to how Barbara uses herself in the world, in ways that go beyond being artistic, or expressive, or good with her hands. It’s who she is. Being creative makes her feel safe, able to cope with whatever comes along. Barbara has intentionally shaped her life so that she lives it as expressively as possible, improvising when necessary and turning easily to her own inner resources as well as a web of people around her for help as needed, resulting in a rich, satisfying, and meaningful life despite the lack of things many of us deem necessary for the “good life.”
Things such as consumer goods, vested jobs, health insurance. Barbara, in her early 60’s, lives on very little, making do economically in order to have the time and energy to invest in what really matters to her: people, social justice, alleviating hardship where she can, creation.
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One of the ways she does so is in her work life--the blend of paid versus unpaid, “life” work, of how to be true to her own purposes while earning her keep. Barbara was fortunate to have had an extraordinary older friend when she was in her early 20’s. The friend taught her that what you have to do to make a living and what you do with your
"life--your goals, your ultimate concerns--are not separate, and don’t have to be. They can be woven together even when seemingly disparate. Who you are and want to be in the world can be enacted in every job you have: “So I can be and do what I want in the world just as easily working in a bookstore as a Dean of Admissions, just as easily as a writer as . . . working in a fabric store. Once you get the idea that circumstances don’t determine who you are and what you want to be in the world, a light turns on."
When the light turned on for her, Barbara “got it” that vocation is one path towards purpose which can be fulfilled by both paid and unpaid work. Vocation fleshes out purpose, and is a means to an end, not the end in itself. But hear her describe it:
"I don’t have one particular goal, but I have a goal that has a number of parts, which is to do everything I can to try to offset some of the hardships and evil and sadness and all that we can construe as bad in the world, trying to be helpful and selfless and physically and intellectually powerful as I can be. And whether that’s working for the political good or going to Africa or joining Habitat [for Humanity] or giving writing workshops or working in the bookstore or being a good parent or grandparent, there’s always a positive focal point in that, to some extent of course, I go along and just live my life. . . but . . . I don’t live my life without thinking about it. I’m always. . . taking my measure, determining whether I’m doing enough, or whether the direction I’m going in could be changed to make it more productive. . . .You always need a balance . . . because if you don't love and nourish yourself, you can’t love and nourish other people, so I’m not saying that I want to be selfless, but to make sure the balance is always going to be 50/50. And if there’s going to be an off-balance, and I’m strong enough, I want it to be towards other people and away from selfishness."
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While her husband was teaching at Colgate, she began working in the admissions office, then went on to do the same at Amherst College (around the time she and her husband divorced), Sarah Lawrence (where she was Dean), and Bennington (where she was Acting Dean for a year). Gifted with a mellifluous voice, Barbara has also done voice-overs for commercials, tutored in writing, worked in a fabric store (she loves to design and sew clothes) and currently works part-time in a used bookstore.
Those were jobs for money. Much of what she is called to do doesn’t pay money, however, or very little--writing (poetry, fiction, non-fiction), pottery, acting, volunteering, political advocacy--so Barbara swings back and forth between paid and unpaid work.
“It’s frustrating not to have money. For example, it costs $1, 000 to get back to Africa, [Barbara volunteered at the camp a friend had started in South Africa for children affected by AIDS] but I will find a few people to help me with that, work longer hours. I’ve done dog sitting, tutored students for SAT’s (still do that), so it depends on how much time I want to take from writing. I can put that $1,000 together sooner, or later.”
I asked Barbara how she decided what she did when. What called her to buy a piece of land on Prince Edward Island, for example, where she wants to build a house (which she herself is designing, based on hexagons for more efficient heating) to use as a center for people incubating new ideas?
"I think of myself as endlessly curious, and that [leads me] into a number of things. Whenever something seemed to deserve my attention, I’ve done it for awhile: acting, poetry, being a parent, caring about what happens in the world have been consistent, and I’ve done them more than anything else. . . .What I tend to do is say “yes” to things and worry about “how” later. I didn’t always have a choice, but I prefer to have lived my life this way, because of all the different things I’ve done. I’ve never gotten to a point of being bored by it, there was always more to get out of it. Someone who was President has something to point to and say “this is what I did, this is who I was.
I’ll never be able to do that, and I’d like to, it would be nice, but I think it’s a luxury, one that many people, most people, don’t have. That being the case, I go back periodically and look at what I’ve done and try to use that to give me some handle on what I’m going to do next. Or, I plunge blindly ahead and just take the next good thing that comes my way that I know is right, in terms of my values, then I’ll do that. Is it more difficult? In some ways. But when you think about someone who puts all their eggs in one basket, and suddenly it’s gone [as after retirement], such a person, I’m told, suffers a real sense of loss, doesn’t know where to turn next. Where do you go for your resources? I’m not sure my way is any more difficult, but it’s differently difficult.
And it requires that you keep looking and probing and keep your energy up and keep your optimism up. I think that’s also a function of what happens when you’ve lived a certain length of time. Whether you have a single focus or not, the likelihood is that in your lifetime you’ll have to change gears at least a few times, if not a half-dozen. So if you’ve trained yourself to do this, or it has fallen to you to do this, you may be in better shape than the person who hasn’t. I don’t know if it’s a better way, just because I’ve done it. But I can always see there are goods and bads in whatever path you choose. I probably could have had a more direct path, my parents and in-laws were academic people, I could have gone on in an academic career, or stayed in the theater. . . [but] meaning is found in so many different places! I can’t imagine the other way, I haven’t lived it."
Barbara’s way of living, to look around her and see what needs attention, and her impulse to create good out of something, to “offset some of the hardships and suffering . . . in the world” intrigued me. I wanted to learn where it came from. She appears to inhabit the role of creator so easily, with absolute confidence. How had she come by it?
Barbara’s family situation and childhood had significant bearing on the direction she took. She is the second of four children, three girls and one boy, with her two younger sisters coming much later. She was born when her brother Bobby, the eldest, was two. When he was a toddler, Bobby had to be rushed to the hospital for emergency surgery and developed encephalitis, resulting in brain damage. As he grew older, it manifested itself in physical destructiveness, including wrecking things in Barbara’s room. The solution was to give Barbara locks on her door, so that she could protect her room when not in it, and lock herself in when playing there. Until she was eight years old, Barbara played alone, locked in her room, and it was under those circumstances she began to create. She made her own toe shoes by cutting circles out of wood and stuffing them in ballet slippers, decorated the doll house which had come down to her from her great-grandmother, fashioned a three ring circus out of clay. Playing alone of necessity, and because her brother required so much attention, Barbara did not want to add to her parents’ burdens by asking for attention of her own; instead, she became a resourceful child, calling on her own imagination to create a life, safe in her room.
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Between school and theater, there was little time left, or perhaps inclination, for hanging out with her peers; indeed, because of her home situation, she felt set apart from other kids. I wondered what impact that had: was it lasting? Did she still feel set apart?
“Yes and no. I know I have choices now, to be a part of things or not. The key thing with anything that makes you unhappy is whether you feel you have a choice or not--and now I do. If I feel too much alone, I can adjust that; or too much in the world, that too. Part of it is living in Northampton, where I can be who I am. I’m 80% a loner, 20% not, make sure I get enough of the world to stay healthy. And I do it also for my morality: working at Habitat, the AIDS camp, etc., takes care of both. I love humanity, I just can’t spend time in bland conversation! Part of it is age; as I get older, I need to really spend time and energy wisely--life, time, is so precious! I choose things to do where the likelihood is I’m going to enjoy being in the company of those people-- at the Unitarian Society, at the bookstore--that’s the wisdom of knowing what’s right for you. I’ve known it earlier, but I was too nice to say ‘sorry, no.’ I’ve found how to say no. . . . I’m still much more of a loner than a group person. I like both, and I can choose, but ultimately, I’m [more] at home up here writing on my computer."
Barbara gestures to the laptop sitting on the floor, next to her bed, where she is writing a book of poetry. Her space feels safe, and embracing, a world unto itself. I can understand how it would pose a daily choice, to go out into the world and act, or stay in and create.
Barbara, who stands erect and centered, like the dancer she has also been, used an apt image when she described creativity itself as her “plumb line.” “Yes, it came to me early. If you talk in terms of how your heart, or bones, or blood works, it’s never far from the surface.” Her creativity is always there for her, lining her up with what’s essential. I am reminded of the verse from the biblical book of Amos, where God tells Amos “I am setting a plumb line in the midst of my people” while standing there with plumb line in hand, a divine show and tell. Barbara’s own plumb line seems as viscerally present as God’s did to Amos. It is so “there” in her. Plumb line, gold standard, her creativity is also, ultimately, Barbara’s vocation, in a broad sense:
"If I have a vocation, it is to give people some sense of possibility that they can do creative things with their lives that don’t follow along the mainstream. I’m trying to help people feel larger about their lives. . . . I love doing that! It’s not my creativity so much, it’s [more] as an offering. I love watching children develop and give them tools to live their lives as largely as possible. I like talking to someone who isn’t quite there yet, about to do something bigger. I’m a firm believer in endlessly throwing bread on the waters--just because it feels good to you or can help someone feel good about themselves. Like in admissions, I loved making an eighteen year old realize he or she can do anything with his or her life. My vocation is making connections with other people, [like] people who have helped me along the way."
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Excerpt 2.
"Karen N."
Diva turned Music Therapist
Life-changing moments often enter our lives quietly. While we long for something Big, preferably in neon, a revelatory moment may slip in subtly, just part of the daily routine.
So it was for Karen N., who remembers such a moment in her life, a point at which her life path took a radical turn, to be sure, but she wasn’t aware of it at the time. Karen was working with her composition teacher at the Juilliard School of Music where she had trained in piano since she was five years old. Now twenty, on this particular day she was talking about how music could change a mood. Her teacher remarked “you sound like my friend Paul Nordhoff.” Nordhoff was the founder of music therapy in Europe, she told Karen, and along with Clyde Robbins, another pioneer, ran the music therapy center at New York University. Karen’s teacher brought in a video about Nordhoff doing his work. In the film he was improvising music with a child. Karen knew immediately “Oh, I can do that!” Not that she would do that, not even that she wanted to do that, just: “I can do that.” Attempting to describe the texture of that moment, Karen says it was “just an immediate connection. . . that doesn’t really have words. [It was] a knowing. . . that I can do that. It wasn’t even like ‘I need to do that,’ no plan, just a moment. . . . A split second. I couldn’t get over his connection with the child, and his music mirroring the feelings of the child, and I could feel. . . both.”
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A new trajectory to her life began that day Karen first saw Paul Nordhoff doing music therapy. New, yet calling upon all she had been trained and educated to do. From her earliest years, Karen was raised to become a concert pianist. Living in an apartment on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, her family had a neighbor who was a well-known concert pianist, Leon Fleischer. At age two Karen would visit the Fleischers and pick out tunes on their piano. Realizing she had significant musical ability, Karen’s parents started her taking piano lessons at age four, moving on to the Juilliard at age five. Karen took lessons there the entire time she was in school, K-12, and on through the Master’s level in piano performance. Music was her life, and as a teenager, composition was what increasingly drew her attention. Karen was fascinated by the effect of music on a person, its inherent power, how it could change mood, transform one’s internal balance. She continued to perform over all those years, but performance “wasn’t really in my nature. . . I was always nervous.”
How difficult it can be to be called to something inchoate. How confusing when your spirit and body know something is right for you, but your rational self is demanding something entirely different! Supported as it is by mainstream culture, and often one’s family, the logical voice says “this is the way to live.” Bolstered by the ego’s demands to achieve, to gain recognition, to make money, a louder voice often drowns out the quieter voice of the soul which whispers “you must do this--this will feed you, and through it you will grow, you will flourish, you will discover who you are.” Karen did know that performance did not satisfy her, even though she was exceptionally good at it. From the age of ten, in fact, performing caused her considerable anxiety: her fingers would shake, she feared she was not good enough, and she would lose control and concentration as she played. Playing piano was her entire life, but it was a life laid out for her by her parents. It was music’s internal power, its effect on the inner being, that captured her, even as she was being groomed to assume the role of a diva.
Dividing her attention between performance and composition with one foot in each of two worlds was second-nature to Karen, however, for she was used to serving a split agenda: her parents’, and her own. Leokadia (Lynn) and David Naparstek were Holocaust survivors who came to the United States after the war, having both lost essentially their entire families. Settling on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, they surrounded themselves with other survivors and Poles, their countrymen. Forming a tight circle, they “protected” themselves in the service of survival, a not uncommon response among survivors of trauma. Karen felt it was up to her as the new generation to remind her parents that life really could go on, to try to make them happy again. About her role, Karen says:
"Being born to survivors, you are born into a new life, so you are the saving grace over death. Most died, but you are alive . . . .The expectation is ‘you will give us life, you are our dialysis machine’ . . . . [so] I was an enjoyable, entertaining baby, I danced, I sang, at 2 years old. . . It was an emotional dialysis for my parents. I did not exist as a being for myself, I was born to save them. . . ."
Karen knows now that her experience as a child of Holocaust survivors was not unlike others’ but that doesn’t change its impact on her. She and her brother were born with a
"heavy emotional burden on them, of necessity: being born into death and trauma and ashes, there’s no past. You start from death. Whatever came before, it’s dead, so you’re not connected with anything, so I’m just born from these ashes. That’s a burden, that’s a heavy duty. It’s a lot to make sense of. So all of that has led me to see life a little differently than others, and to use creativity and art to connect me with what should be in the world. That’s why I have a big desire to restore, probably, to pour water on the ashes, to make them come alive again. Underneath there’s green that life can come from. . . like trees after fire. Life will always grow, because that’s the nature of life. And creativity, creation, that’s what the world is really about. And too many people don’t know that.”
Born, as she felt she was, to bring new life to her parents, to restore an entire family--an entire generation--it’s easy to see why Karen wanted to please them, make them happy if that was possible. Musically gifted, she did what was expected of her, and what she could do: she performed. She entertained. She provided a focus for hope and new life. And as she grew up, while her own soul may have gone unnourished, she was feeding the family’s emotional needs--under the circumstances, how could a young person do otherwise?
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As she had known she would when watching the video, Karen had a gift for “clinical improvisation,” which she describes as the ability to create music out of whatever the child does when they are together, whether that’s kicking a foot or gazing out the window. “It’s about energy, it’s about connection, it’s about consciousness. To make the invisible visible. It’s about tapping into a being who can’t communicate, about creating connection with people who lack connection to the outside world. And that is basically what I do, create a new language through improvisation, and converse through the music, and the relationship builds . . . .” Karen becomes even more animated and alive when talking about her work. Clearly she loves what she does, clearly she knows she does it well, and clearly she is inspired by doing it. There is no trace of any anxiety now, only a shining face and an aura of joy.
Karen loved doing music therapy, had the first of five children, moved with her husband to Connecticut to an architecturally stunning house she dearly loved: it sat on a river and had lots of glass, so she could watch the light and seasons change, see storms come and go. Life was good. She was passionate about being a mother, did free-lance writing, played piano, taught part-time at NYU, had all the money she needed, and “didn’t think about anything, about my mission, my work in life.” But then, over a long, slow arc, her marriage began to unravel. Karen stayed with it longer than she should have because she wanted stability for her children. As her husband’s practice as a psychoanalyst faltered, their finances suffered, and by the time they separated (after 25 years of marriage), she had the children and nothing else, plus a mountain of debt to dig out of.
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Struggling to keep the body and soul of her family together, living hand to mouth with the help of friends and family, Karen’s activities were scattered, frantic, even, trying to make enough money to live on. She had a small private practice of music therapy by then, but had to move her office from place to place, whatever was least expensive and available. She was quickly gaining a reputation for good results in working with the developmentally disabled, but it was hard to build up her practice when she was forced to keep moving her office.
Then a dear friend, Josephine Mason, came to visit from Nevada, and it was Josephine, says Karen, who set her on the path to establishing the center. A business consultant by profession, Josephine pointed out to Karen that she needed to work in one place. Josephine helped her get nonprofit status and organized the center legally, administratively, and financially.
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Karen is on her way to financial stability, for the center, and for herself. All the threads of her life have come together, and her intuition of so many years ago, “I can do that! ” has come to fruition. Other people were involved in making it happen, notably Josephine, but the force behind it is clearly Karen, and particularly her creative vision.
Where did that vision come from? How did it develop? Karen is emphatic that creativity is what saved her as a child, took her out of the small, tight circle in which her parents sought to keep her protected:
"I escaped. I found the world through creativity, and that became my reality, not theirs. I just needed to connect to the real world. Their world was not the real world. My parents were overprotective, they had post-traumatic stress syndrome personalities [The lingering effects left by trauma such as the feeling of not being safe in the world]. I was withdrawn and isolated because my mother wouldn’t let me go anywhere, she was afraid I might die, so I spent a lot of time alone. I was social in school, but wasn’t allowed to do other stuff, so I’d write, play the piano, make up stories . . . I really learned to use creativity as an expression of self, as a language for myself, so in terms of what I do now, it’s very familiar to me to use music and art to get in on a deep level, as a means of communication, because that’s how I communicated with myself to know who I was."
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While using creative expression as a way to develop her own sense of identity and alleviate loneliness may have been foisted on Karen of necessity, it also gave her rich experience in different ways to communicate. It is no great surprise, then, that a major part of the center’s success is Karen’s uncanny ability to communicate with children and adults with grave impediments to verbal communication. Many of her clients are children with autism, and she also works with people with Alzheimer’s, those who have suffered brain damage, and any number of conditions that keep people from being able to express themselves. Karen starts from the premise that her clients can communicate, but not in the “normal” ways of spoken language. Music becomes a substitute language.
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“It’s an abstract form of communication--the whole idea is to work with children or adults. . . people who can’t speak or communicate, [but who] obviously have a well of feelings and thoughts and ideas inside, but society doesn’t recognize that these people are in there! They are there, but not seen. I use the part of the brain that doesn’t have to process cognitively. Music reaches in to you where you are. When two people connect in an improv like this, it just goes. You tap into the person’s energy, and then you can move the energy into another form. I work on two levels at one time: on one level, nonthinking, just being, but also intellectually seeing where the person needs to go."
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It’s okay you’re you, and you just have to be who you are, and accept that. . . . everyone has trouble with self-acceptance, and these people are no exception, it’s hard for them too! It’s about tapping into a being who can’t communicate, about creating connection with people who lack connection to the outside world. . . . Connection is very important, that’s how you get these kids to come out of themselves. They have to feel not only connected to themselves, but to another person. I hold my hands out to the symbolic bridge, I say, ‘okay, come, I’ll take you to reality, I’ll take you the outside world from inside. Don’t be scared.”
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Karen’s vision doesn’t end with the center; there is much more she wants to accomplish. One goal is working with neurologists and other doctors and scientists to prove that the brain can be repatterned through the arts, the better to move forward her vision for making the arts part of special education; another is to reproduce her center all around the country for those who have need of such therapeutic work.
“My feeling is, I must do this! I know it needs to be there, and nobody else is doing it. It just must be. And I must do everything I can to do it, and not let anything get in my way. . . .Working with these kids, its pure creativity, so my goal is not only to create centers around the country, but to take what comes out of them, and produce from them, using the art, the music, the theater. . . . New things for kids, not mass produced. We’ll give an alternative. I always wanted to do children’s stuff, but now I have to, to survive. It’s all condensed now. I’m going to be saved by saving. I’m going to be healed by healing. I am rewarded by rewarding. I get gifted by using my gifts.
Before I met her, Karen had been described to me as unique, charismatic, even magical. And she is. What I saw was this: Karen is the way she is because she is so firmly connected to her own soul. And because she responds and acts from her soul, she is able to connect to people on a very deep level. She communicates through connection: connection is her gift, and purpose, and reward, all in one. Karen does it better than many, in her own unique way, but anyone who connects to his or her own soul will also be gifted by whatever is there, waiting to be called upon.