Kira Sarai Helper is an Actress, Singer and Board Certified Music Therapist (MT-BC) based in New York and Boston and working everywhere.
I once created an emotions album with a young music therapy client of mine to help them explore ways of coping and understanding their feelings: not judging their emotions, but observing them, letting them happen, and then letting them fall away.
“Okay, but how does anger feel?” I asked them.
They tensed their body and fists and said “Hot.” I asked if anger was blue? No, they said, it’s red. And how does anger sound? I proceeded to pull open Garageband on an iPad and we tested out some different chords, instruments, rhythms and tempos.
“It’s LOUD!” They exclaimed, choosing a minor chord groove played by a distorted electric guitar. I asked them if anger always starts out that way. “And how does anger end?” I posed.
They pondered. I pondered.
They then described to me how sometimes anger can simmer and creep up on you, then it explodes, but you always come back down eventually. And thus, the arc of our track was set in motion. We let the beginning of the song simmer and crescendo into an explosion, then we let it fall back to equilibrium. We ended the track with a solitary 16th-note syncopated heartbeat.
No matter the age of my clients (the youngest I’ve worked with being months old, and the oldest being 101 years of age), or the nature of a role I’m playing, music therapy, teaching, and performing are all about finding a way in. A way to connect. And there are so many ways to do so.
I allow myself to be curious, ask questions. Every person I work with is different. Every character I approach is different. Every song I write connects me to myself and the world in different ways. I find knowing that the same process isn’t going to work every time, to be so freeing. I value the flexibility of allowing my process to always change.