How to Sing

finding joy despite, or maybe because, of everything

Many years ago I was an intern at a psychiatric hospital. It was terribly frightening, actually. The hospital was in an ancient looking turn of the century asylum on the top of a hill in Upstate NY. There were bars on the windows, and the whole feeling reminded one of Wuthering Heights. My office, which I shared with a colleague with whom I did not get along, was a small room with the aforementioned bars on its only window. Our supervisor, as old as the building, was a bitter woman who had followed the excessive rules governing psychotherapy in state institutions for her entire career. Lacking insight, and seemingly, joy in life, her guidance seemed limited to stern admonitions about time cards and paperwork. It was hard not to feel as if one were an inmate oneself when the locking ward doors closed and one said good bye to fresh air for the day.

But what I remember most, aside from choosing to end my placement at the hospital early, was one patient in the long term care unit. Initially one might have mistaken her for a cleaning lady. This was because, although dressed in a hospital gown, she hugged the edge of the corridor leaning on a dry mop. As she moved, swaying slightly with foreshortened mopping gestures on the linoleum floor, she muttered. At first it was hard to hear, but I made out a few repeated words. I can’t, I can’t, I can’t sing she intoned.

Her phrase, which has left a mark on my psyche, seemed to tell the entire story of her mental illness. What is it, after all, other than the inability to sing? I asked, if maybe, I should speak with her. No point, I was told, too damaged, too intrenched, too medicated.

So what is it to sing? What is joy, and how does one discover it, heavy as we sometimes are with life’s burdens, and seemingly infinite tasks?

I am an amazement junkie. I find that I am often amazed, and that I can stumble upon amazement easily. I am amazed at the child who can tell me her whole story. I once asked a five year old, who’s parents had separated, what home was. She turned her face up toward mine, eyes wide, and said, If my parents were together, the whole world would be my home. Amazement.

I hear the story of the butterfly, formed from the dissolved caterpillar, to fliyacross the world. I am amazed, the cliched stories of transformation dropped, the wingspan of the tiny being foremost in my mind-I see oceans crossed and flowers mounted. Amazed.

Joy. For me, joy happens with I don’t stop the wave-like swell of wonder that arises in amazement. Dissolved, I find my wings in simply being stunned. I am stunned.

It seems important not to put joy into words too quickly. Although I always counsel my clients to bring their insight to word so that they can embody their discoveries on every plane of their being, when it comes to joy, I think it right to stand speechless. Stand in the stillness of wonder. Give yourself over to not trying to understand.

Very often, understanding becomes a kind of ownership. As such, one can be tempted to reduce what one sees to what fit with what one believes.

Go the other way. Let the mystery explode you. You will be forced to become a bigger being by the light that fills you with joy.

My studio will be open this Saturday from 12 to 5 in conjunction with the Greater Ithaca Art Trail. Monthly First Saturdays on the Greater Ithaca Art Trail are a program of the Community Arts Partnership of Tompkins County. 

To see other Art Trail studios that are open, visit www.ArtTrail.com