BY MARINA JARIEVIC
Music is known as a universal language, and there is no surprise that it successfully and creatively links people, regardless of their abilities, gender, consciousness, culture and age. It empowers us and makes us cross the boundaries of conventional communication. In this Resource Sheet I would like to reflect on this by using a recent example from one of our sessions with Olivia.
Olivia is an amazing young lady who uses her musicality as a way of expressing herself in an incredibly creative way.
We started this session by creating a `physical` space. We positioned a big keyboard on Olivia`s footrest (next to an upright piano) so that she could easily reach the keys and change the rhythms if and when she wished. At Us in a Bus the Interaction Practitioners work in pairs, which gives us the opportunity to make ourselves available as active communicative partners at various levels, allowing a space for synergy.
While my partner was in close proximity to Olivia`s head and responding – mirroring/echoing Olivia`s subtle expressions – I used the piano`s subtle sound to blend into the conversation. This stage was important, as it enabled us to make basic contact with Olivia, from which our communication developed further. I played repetitive gentle music to create a `sound space`, that was predictable and calming.
A sound space is a space of `safety` where the sound means calm continuity and, at this stage, it was not necessarily in response to Olivia. Because it was a relaxed and undemanding sound it enveloped the space, serving as an introduction to our conversation.
Sometimes this can last for a long time, and sometimes it can be less than a minute, but we always adjust our introduction according to the needs of the people we work with.
When Olivia started to pay more attention to the `sound space` we started to follow her musically, using piano, guitar, drum and our human voice, slowly building up a conversational turn taking. As Olivia became aware that she was now leading and shaping the music with her mannerisms, the intensity of her expressions amazingly increased.
Mirroring/echoing the expressions of the people we work with is an extremely important stage in intensive interaction, but this is also a starting point. In order to be heard, we need to make it known that we are ready to listen. The real skill is in developing those creative additional responses that will capture our people’s intention and motivate them to be more responsive, inventive and creative. This equates to an interesting verbal debate when we reflect on something relevant to us.
In our sessions there are no rules, and there are no limits. We are consistently surprised, and inspired, by the genuine originality of the people we work with.
Back to our conversation with Olivia. We started to add new elements to make our conversation more diverse, both on a close proximity level and in the musical composition. Our playing changed into a jazzy improvisational music and Olivia started to use her feet to play and shape the rhythm, volume and pitch. At first this was an occasional single tone, but as we were developing our interactions, such as adding elements of proprioception – e.g. pressing her shoulder in response to a big sigh or a played loud note, Olivia started to become more and more involved. We responded to her head movements with arpeggios and that seemed to motivate her to do some arpeggios of her own! This was such a big effort and we felt honoured when she allowed us to step into her world of sound and her sense of music. We were able to feel and say `we can hear you`. We were part of an amazing musical, artistic and humane exchange.
Our interactions, however big or small, long or short, loud or quiet, are all about trust, confidence, expression and feeling comfortable. When experiencing the beauty of Olivia`s musical expression we felt privileged that she wanted to share her world with us. We communicated, and that is probably the ultimate cultural form of expression.
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