Hello, my friend!
I’m fresh from Newport Jazz, so this week’s email is all about music. What it does for us on every level, and how it can even heal us.
↓ In today’s email:
- This week’s inspiration: Fresh from Newport Jazz
- Latest blog post: The Healing Is in the Music
- What I read this week: Live at the Village Vanguard
This Week’s Inspiration: Fresh From Newport Jazz
I almost jumped out of my skin watching Jon Batiste through a sea of baseball caps. I could see him only through my right eye, like a toddler ready to spring into action, and I could not contain myself: dancing, samba, salsa, and gyrating all at once.
He said to the crowd, "This is not music. It’s a spiritual experience. We are co-creating this energy. I’m giving it to you, and you’re giving it right back to me." And then thousands of hearts leapt at the chance.
The timing is right for this subject, because at this exact moment Newport is the epicenter of music in the Northeast. Folk Festival last weekend, Jazz Fest this one. People come to pay their respects and to feel something deep inside themselves. In my case, electric joy.
So on that note, let’s dive in.
We are all blessed, just unevenly.
Of the five senses, it seems we’re talented with one, two, maybe three. Perhaps you’re aesthetically oriented, so what the eyes say means everything. Perhaps you’re tactile, and piles of cashmere sweaters, or even a fuzzy cat (meow), offer orgasmic delight. Maybe you’re a gourmand, and your discerning palate explains the world. And then there are those with an acute olfactory sense, who enjoy beautiful smells but can also detect sour teen clothes from down the hallway. (I may know such a person.)
And then there’s hearing.
It’s my weakest sense. But I fell in love with a man who loves music deeply, the grandson of a band leader from the Harlem Renaissance, so music is big at our house. Even in utero, the children heard Duke Ellington, Ella Fitzgerald, and Chet Baker.
All this is to say, it seems appropriate that this week is about music: sound that moves us, sound that heals us, this thing that unites all of humanity and inspires and provokes and, at its best, heals us. And because I can’t help myself — it don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.
Latest Blog Post
The Healing Is in the Music
Music is the language of acupuncture. Every point has its own vibration — low as whale song at the bottom of the feet, bright as a bell at the crown of the head. Sounds the ear can’t hear, but the body can.
Then there’s actual sound, which came into my practice by accident. My clinic was next door to a hair salon with thin walls, and the gossip came right through. The fix was headphones, and it turned out to be far better than what I had before. Now I build the sound around whoever is on the table: movement for the woman who feels stuck, a lullaby for insomnia, the sound of rain for dryness.
The post also gets into why the powers that be have always found music dangerous, and one thing I was sure wasn’t true until I checked.
What I Read This Week
Live at the Village Vanguard by Max Gordon
When pressed about what to read this week, I started both Musicophilia by Oliver Sacks and This Is Your Brain on Music by Daniel Levitin. Two neurologists who between them successfully squeezed every ounce of joy out of the subject matter. So I had to move on.
I considered a book about David Bowie, maybe Bono’s most recent one, and then it occurred to me. So perfect, and it lines up exactly with Jazz Fest.
Max Gordon opened the Village Vanguard in a Greenwich Village basement in 1935 and ran it for more than fifty years, and this is his account of it. His wife Lorraine, who took the club over after he died and kept it going into her nineties, had already helped record a quiet young pianist back in the 1940s. You’ve heard of him. Thelonious Monk.
When I read this a long time ago, it wasn’t easy to track down the specific musicians mentioned in it. Now, with Apple Music or Spotify, you can build your own little playlist as you go. When Max Gordon starts talking about an artist, you can pull the music up and let it transport you to another time and, for sure, another century.
It’s a fun one. Enjoy!
Happy week to come xoxoxoxoxo. Talk soon!
Dr. Catherine