7/08/2021
It is August 2021 and I am taking a break from my EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) therapy. I considered writing something more poetic as the beginning of this piece, but it doesn’t feel organic, firstly because something as blunt as this cessation should, in my eyes, be reflected in the form and secondly, I am reading a collection of essays by an Italian writer called Natalia Ginzburg, which, stylistically, is as minimalist as they come, and this may have rubbed off on me a little.
The irony here is that, as a minimalist in these particular essays, Ginzburg’s sentences are short and punchy, but the sentence preceding this one is as meandering as one could imagine. Once again, I have indulged myself. Even this self-analysis is indulgent. However, if you are a seasoned reader of this project this will not surprise you at all.
I have been in the process of this ‘new’ therapy for a year now. In that time my therapist and I have completed two pieces of processing of two different traumatic memories. This last piece of processing was completed a few weeks ago and this is a major milestone. We have decided that after the intensity of this work the time for a break, or an interlude, has come. EMDR has paused, and I am now having general psychotherapy at a reduced rate. The test is to see how I cope, because one day, when the trauma work is completed, I will begin to restart and experiment with a life that I have always imagined.
This is the time to use the extra hours nurturing the things I love and dip my toes in different vocations, in the effort of discerning a direction for me when this new life begins to eventuate.
Trombone self portrait
I have spent my life loving music.
I played trombone for eleven years. I began at the age of eight and played every day until I was nineteen. I then put the trombone down for nearly ten years and now, at the age of twenty-eight (almost twenty-nine…) I have dug it out of the basement and begun to play once more. It took a while to find; it was amongst the lifetime’s worth of possessions that made the journey from Australia to England in a giant crate and resided in the depths for the last eight years. When I found it (in a cupboard in the basement) I opened the case and discovered that this faithful old instrument was missing a key piece. Covered in duct tape and looking forlorn, it left me baffled. I had no memory of this happening (it was the water key for those interested; the saliva accumulates and must be released somewhere, oh the intricacies of playing a brass instrument!) Disappointed that I couldn’t immediately pick it up and blast out a few notes, I googled ‘brass repairs London’ and discovered Dots the Camden Music Shop. I arranged a repair and general service. I decided upon the latter because frankly, after a decade of non-use, who knew what was in there? I hauled it over to Camden (a bus and two trains – not bad by London standards) and gave it to an enthusiastic employee for the next three days. They had ordered the parts in advance and their delight in their work was apparent.
When I picked it up the person who returned it beamed at me and said, ‘I love seeing people reunited with their instruments!’ Their passion for the art was clear. I felt it because it mirrored my own which I realised had never left, merely lain dormant over the last few eventful years.
My love for the trombone began when I was eight, but I laid hands on it as a toddler. My Dad played trombone when he was young and we still had his instrument (and still do!) There is a picture of me as a young kid, blowing into the mouthpiece while Dad held the trombone, as it completely dwarfed me. It was the trombone I learnt to play on.
‘Can’t you see I’m playing right now?’
It was grade 4, I was eight, and in music class we had to pick a musical instrument to learn. I decided I wanted to play the trombone like my Dad. My music teacher sniffed at me and said, ‘You can’t do that, you’re too small, and your arms are too short.’ I didn’t accept this and told her I was going to play it anyway, by stretching. So, I did. The trombone was taller than me and heavy, but I didn’t see this as an issue, and it never was. Playing trombone is all in the breathing, not how big you are, and I like to think I proved that teacher wrong when she said I was too small to play.
I continued playing the trombone during the rest of my school years, both solo and as a part of school bands, exploring both classical and jazz styles and much preferring the latter. I then played in a funk band for the first eighteen months of university.
I also grew up playing the piano and singing. I still enjoy singing today. Music is not just an expression of something inside of me but is itself the point. I have written before how my blog writing is not just the vehicle for my thoughts and feelings but a therapy in itself, practically. The artistic medium is the point. I feel the same way about music. When I look back at my trombone-playing days I remember the key performances, yes. But just as vivid in my mind are the thousands of hours of practice over eleven years, the lessons, and most of all, the months of standing in the living room at home, every night, improvising on my trombone while my Dad played the piano. These were some of the best hours of my life.
Now I am older, with no high pressure performance on the horizon, just a desire to return to that expression and that feeling, particularly in a time of transience both practically and emotionally. Now I only have to build up my embouchure, or lip muscle, and maybe I can improvise my heart out at the piano once more.
I continue to write as a method of self-expression. That won’t ever change. It has been a while since my last post, and this is partly because I spent a whole month writing mediocre poetry, the majority of which is likely better suited to my bin folder than on an internet page I am actively encouraging people to read. I have piles of notebooks full of thoughts, drafts and patches of text I tear apart and reassemble for something-or-other. ‘I like this phrase,’ I think. So it winds up in a post two months later, but rearranged, in a different context, in a different form. I have documented a lot of 2021 in poetic style because it feels natural and I’m a sucker for an internal rhyme. Some things are hard to write straight.
This interlude from EMDR therapy is an adjustment. But I am playing my way through it, musically, with my pen, and in even more exciting phases of life that are blooming with each day, with each pocket of time, and with each opportunity I find on this widening path.