creating yourself
“What is composing music all about?” I asked the class.
I am teaching another Young Composer session, this time to sixth graders. I scribble their thoughts about music quickly on the black board: writing your own tune, expressing yourself, giving the beat, listening to yourself, being famous, making money.
I wipe the chalk from my hands, “Creating your own song, being heard, witnessing,” I suggest. They stop for a moment. “Creating yourself,” I add. They are quiet.
Music has this element of bearing witness; it is that space where I reveal all that I am and dream of who I am becoming. I noticed it most distinctly when I worked with the homeless women, helping them to write operas about their lives. It was slow and oftentimes painful work as they pieced out their stories and wrote lyrics and songs. But it was there that I truly saw the raw power of art for the first time—the ability to transform, to reach beyond the “dailyness” of living to the reinvention of self.
To sing about oneself is to be visible. To witness life is to stand apart and speak one’s truth. To perform a work together is to collaborate for clarity of the moment.
Listen: Bright Flash of Wings for string sextet: http://: https://soundcloud.com/tina-davidson-3/a-bright-flash-of-wings-excerpt
Excerpted from Grief’s Grace, A Memoir by Tina Davidson
