“And those who had seen it told how he who had been possessed with demons was healed.” – Luke 8:36

When was the last time it happened to you? Hearing a new or favorite song whose words seemed to ease just what’s troubling you, a melody that restored your breath to a natural, relaxed rhythm. Reading a book whose main character was challenged by life in a way that rang true for
you – providing a road map to resolution. Viewing a painting whose image stopped you in your tracks – sending out a thrill from the central nervous system. Watching a troupe of graceful dancers performing superhuman feats and leaps that left you reeling. Entering a movie theater as an average person and through some passive abracadabra orchestrated under the cover of darkness, you emerged a super-hero.

We have all experienced it – the healing and transformative power of art.

When a song, movie or book grabs holds of you, makes off with your heart, soul, spirit – and deposits you back on earth, changed, sometimes in the span of moments.

Issuing Calm from Chaos

The fact is, each of us, not just celluloid heroines or professional, accomplished artists, has the power to harness art to serve our personal needs for healing and transformation as we evolve and progress along our individual journey.

In writing workshops it is my job to provide a safe and supportive environment to give everyday people with something to say, the space to do so. In the past year, I have watched a grandmother agonize over the loss of a granddaughter in a horrific campus shooting, rise, determined that her spirited life be celebrated in words and not just mourned. Stood in quiet awe as a too young widow, still reeling from her loss, dug down to a place deep within her being, allowing her muse to unlock a treasure of stunning fiction. Witnessed a scientist with that rare ability to educate and simultaneously weave a good tale, conceive several chapters toward a book. Comforted an 85-year-old still mourning the loss of her mother when she was just a child of five. And mourned myself as one of my students came to the end of her own earth walk, with such grace and dignity and a generous spirit intact that allowed her to inspire and comfort others up to the end of her life.

Each of these women had a deep knowing that writing could lead them through anger, pain, angst, loss and even their own mortality. That by opening their hearts and letting their heart wrenching and at times heart rejoicing stories flow, they would be delivered to a place where they could begin to heal and transform their lives.

In Falling Through Space, a compilation of journal entries, Ellen Gilchrist writes, “The mind is trying very hard to tell us things when we write books. The first impulse is as good as the second or the third – any thread if followed long enough will lead out of the labyrinth and into the light. So I believe or choose to believe.

The work of a writer is to create order out of chaos. Always, the chaos keeps slipping back in. Underneath the created order the fantastic diversity and madness of life goes on, expanding and changing and insisting upon itself. Still, each piece contains the whole. Tell one good story truly and with clarity and you have done all anyone is required to do.”

Moving Beyond Our Confines

In the February 2008 issue of Oprah Magazine, novelist Wally Lamb writes about the writing workshops he has conducted in a women’s high-security prison in Connecticut for the past eight years. “Writing fiction invites me to move beyond the limitations of my own experience and better understand the un-me, the other. I am similarly invited to do so each time I go to jail,” writes Lamb.

“But a person need not go to prison to access the therapeutic value of autobiographical writing. Which of us has not put walls and razor wire around our concealed sadness and past regrets? Who among us was raised by a perfect family? Who does not have hilarious, life-affirming stories to share and debilitating secrets to dispel? Which of us is so self-aware that we could not reveal ourselves more deeply by reflecting on our lives with fingertips on the keyboard – and then sharing our discoveries with other writers and bearing witness to theirs? In doing so, we discover that 'the other' and we are more alike than different, variations on a theme of humanity and circumstance.”

Referring to the famous Michelangelo quote about how he “saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free” Lamb says “My inmate students, you, and I are damaged angels-in-waiting who have the potential to sculpt our best selves with the aid of paper and pen. The rehabilitative power of our words invites us to test our still-wet wings tentatively at first and then with greater and greater assurance."

Fits and Starts

Once we set our stories in motion they take on a life of their own, demanding their own way. They will take us over rough terrain where we might choose a smooth road instead. Sometimes they will spill out of us like an obsessive fever, other times we will have to prime the pump over and over to keep the flow in motion.

At first, what comes to light may be steeped in anger, fear, guilt, blame or regret. It is good to capture the raw and painful. Healthy even, to vent it onto paper, releasing it from our bodies.

Sometimes, time needs to pass, allowing for artistic distance, before we are able to apply clarity and see beyond negative experience and emotions. Before we can find the silver lining in the cloud that will allow us to move forward.

Eventually, we are able to move into a phase where we can use art to inspire instead of intimidate, to energize instead of drain, to engage instead of alienate and to move out of frustration into a sense of productivity.

It is then we can harness the power of art to heal what needs healing in our lives and transform ourselves, to move forward with strength, wisdom, understanding and humility.

Send in the Symphony  

Also in Falling Through Space, Ellen Gilchrist wrote, “It is impossible to be stupid while listening to Bach. There is something about the art of fugue that soothes the brain. I used to make a joke about this and tell my friends they could stop suffering love if they would stop listening to love songs and listen to Bach instead.” She goes on to relate how once during a fretful afternoon, following her own advice, she “found a Bach recording, put it on the stereo and by the third musical phrase the tangles in my mind were unwound and I knew what to do next.”

As this paper goes to press, supporters and critics alike have their eyes on North Korea, where 130 members of the New York Philharmonic are set to perform in the Pyongyang capital. Invited by the North Koreans, the trip has the blessing of the State Department although it is privately financed.

The orchestra visit will mark the largest contingent of Americans in the isolated communist and anti-U.S. country since the Korean War. It comes at a time when tensions between our countries are high over civil rights transgressions as well as North Korea’s nuclear weapons program.

The concert is expected to feature Antonin Dvorak’s “New World Symphony,” George Gershwin’s “An American in Paris,” and the Prelude to Act III of Richard Wagner’s “Lohengrin.” Members of the orchestra also plan on giving master classes to North Korean musicians before departing.

It won’t be the first time the United States has sent a symphony to smooth foreign affairs feathers. In the Cold War 50s, the Boston Symphony visited the Soviet Union and in the 70s, the Philadelphia Orchestra made a groundbreaking trip to China.

Who knows what diplomatic impact the concert may have? Perhaps we should be quiet and wait. Send the music in on little cat feet and let it work its magic, strings and bows and keys and brass, translating the universal healing language of the heart. Humans connecting eye-to-eye, across a concert hall, armed only with instruments.

© 2008 Teresa Piccari

Teresa Piccari is a writer and teacher living in coastal Maine. She is the proprietor of The Village Scribe, a professional writing service meeting personal and business needs. She teaches writing workshops including creative writing, memoir and journaling. She also performs house blessings and is an Usui Reiki Master/Teacher and practitioner. Her business and practice are located at The Wellness Center, 71 Elm St., in Camden. Contact Teresa at This e-mail address is being protected from spambots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it or (207) 344-7070.