The Wounded Healer

4. Meaning in Art and Therapy

Ok so this is not exactly what I thought I was going to write but I was saddened to hear the news of Roberta Flack’s death this week, and felt inspired in a different way. Her work with Donny Hathaway confirmed her place as one of the true soul greats, but it was her 1973 hit Killing Me Softly that catapulted her to worldwide fame. It is widely said that this was a song about Don Mclean and it was hearing this again that made me think of him.

Maclean’s masterful epic poem to American cultural decline ‘American Pie’ has been widely interpreted by many. Including yours truly. I remember as an English student writing the entire lyrics of this song inside my folder and realising just how much I loved the idea of trying to get inside the mind of a fellow artist.

The things is, that you can do this and then hear the artist themselves dismiss the interpretation you have come up with. But does it really matter? Isn’t the point what it means to you?

And that brings me back to Roberta Flack. Much as I love Killing Me Softly, which I took months learning on the keyboards, it is another of her songs that moves me very deeply.

I can’t hear ‘The First Time Ever I saw Your Face’ without tears coming to my eyes. To me the song evokes memories of my late partner Judy and Flack’s interpretation really resonates deeply with that sense of what it means to feel a connection to someone with your very soul. Flack did not write this song. Nor was she the first to sing it, yet I don’t think I personally can associate it with anyone else.

There are many layers to art, especially when it comes to words and music. A great song may well tell us something about the writer, but it cannot come to life until it is performed. And sometimes the performance is greater than the words or the melody. I doubt anyone would argue that Sinead O’Connor’s version of ‘Nothing Compares To U’ isn’t infinitely superior to Prince’s. In fact, I think Prince stopped performing the song altogether after Sinead’s version became a big hit.

Of course, this is also true of the written words in a poem, play or screenplay. They don’t come to life until they are performed, and then it is up to the audience to decide if it resonates with them. Sometimes it feels like an actor is speaking directly to you, and that is very much a result of both the words themselves and the way in which the actor and director bring them to life.

But this idea of how it resonates with the audience is really what interests me the most and perhaps even more specifically the individual. As a therapist I might explore sometimes in a creative way the inner landscape of a client through poetry, pictures or music. I remember one particular young girl I worked with over a number of years (a client who touched me very profoundly and perhaps altered the way I even think about therapy). She wrote beautiful and evocative poetry as well as being able to draw like Leonardo DaVinci (I am not exaggerating – she was that good). Sadly, for confidentiality reasons, I cannot share any of that with you, but I can share how moving it was for her and me to also listen to music together and for her to tell me why different pieces meant so much to her. The stories she told were sometimes hard to hear as she had suffered the most horrific abuse but it made me realise that music, and the creative arts in general are not just a pleasant form of entertainment to cheer us up, they are sometimes an anchor for the soul; a soul that, in her case, someone else had tried to shatter.

So, this brings me to a wider point about what is sometimes referred to in psychotherapy as meaning making. The idea that in order to understand how any event has affected someone psychologically we have to understand the meaning they have attached to it. This is really essential to good therapy, and it is perhaps something even the best therapist can get wrong sometimes. We listen to a client and might start to get a sense of how their words and their story make us feel. This is ok but if we are not able to separate that out from what our client is showing us and telling us about their feelings then we can end up placing our own interpretation on what it meant to them. This is particularly true with teenagers who may well answer the question “How did you feel about that?” with a shrug of the shoulders or a simple “Dunno.”

Which is why it is so essential with this age group (and I would argue adults to, if they are open to it) to go beyond words. She may not be able to tell me how she feels, but she can show me. And this young girl was able to do that in the most remarkable ways.

I should be clear here that I have no training as an art psychotherapist specifically but that does not preclude me from working creatively and in a way that goes beyond words.

What was most interesting with her was when she brought me her first poem and I asked her to read it out to me. She refused to do this and said that I should read it. Reluctantly at first I took her phone and began to read it out loud, She immediately stopped me and said “No, you have to read it to yourself. I don’t want to hear it.”

Obviously, we had to explore what that meant.

In the kindest way possible I said to her that this was a therapy session not an English class. The idea of her bringing a poem to me was not simply for me to read it and comment on it. Of course, she understood this. As I said, she was an exceptionally bright girl who was able almost immediately to acknowledge that hearing her own words read back to her just felt deeply uncomfortable.

I am not surprised.

Her words were heartbreakingly honest.

I will admit I found them hard to read without tears welling up in my eyes.

So I suggested a compromise. What would it be like for her to record them on her phone for a later session and then we would listen to them together. No comment afterwards unless she wanted to say something. She agreed, much to my surprise. I had expected her to say no.

However, my surprise was not entirely unfounded. The next time I saw her she had not done it. At first I could tell by her eagerness to tell me a funny story about her latest antics with her girlfriend, that she was intentionally avoiding the subject. I waited until very nearly the end of the session and then asked her if she had made the recording. She said she had completely forgotten, which I am almost certain was not true. As a good therapist I made it clear it was OK for her to change her mind and not do it if she really didn’t want to. She said no, it was OK she would definitely do it for next time.

She didn’t. And I let it go. Thinking that there would be perhaps other ways of getting this young girl to open up about her real feelings and more specifically find her own voice.

One of the other issues she had was seeing images of herself. She had an almost pathological fear of seeing herself in a mirror or of seeing photographs of herself.

This was something else we worked on over quite a long period of time, but I want to come back to the poetry because one day, out of the blue she came in and told me she had written a poem, and she wanted to read it to me.

I told her that was fantastic, and I couldn’t wait to hear it. But equally I wanted her to know that there would be no critique afterwards. I would not comment on the quality of it, but I might ask her about what it meant to her. She didn’t have to reply if she didn’t want to but I would ask her anyway.

“Deal,” she said.

And so she read it , and I listened. At first it sounded quite mechanical, the way she was reading. But then she stopped. She took a deep breath and started again. She read it with some intensity and by the end there were tears in her eyes.

I had never seen her cry before.

So, I said I would ask her what it meant for her to read it but I didn’t need to.

We sat in silence for what seemed like ages.

Silence was not at all common in these sessions. She was a girl who had a lot to say and was very rarely still or quiet. Yet this silence felt very necessary.

Eventually she looked at me and asked me if I was going to say anything.

I told her I didn’t need to. The words and the way she read them told me everything I needed to know about what it meant.

She laughed and said “Yeah. Whatever!” Then she put her phone down and told me never to ask her to do that again.

I knew she wanted to move on to something more light-hearted, but I made a point of saying to her that I was incredibly moved by what I just heard and that I felt really privileged that she had shared it with me.

I thought she would make another joke at this point, but she said.

“Thank you. It means a lot to me.”

This illustrates I think so powerfully what any form of creative art can do to really touch into the soul of who a person truly is. And I don’t think it maters if it is art you have created yourself or the work of someone else that somehow connects with you in that moment and tells your story.

These lines from Killing Me Softly illustrate that

“He was, strumming my pain with his fingers

Telling my life with his words.

Killing me softly with his song”

You can probably tell that I am passionate about my work and in particular how this one young girl really touched me. It is why I could not imagine myself doing anything else now. Just as, I suspect, many artists would say the same. I don’t consider myself an artist as such but what we share in common is the ability (privilege) to touch other people’s lives.

This girl would often ask me to share my poetry or art with her (she was very curious – nosey some might say). I felt it would be wrong to do this since I didn’t want any of our sessions to be about me. But in order to stay authentic I did occasionally share songs or pieces of writing with her that I thought she would like.

I guessed that she wouldn’t be familiar with Pink Floyd, and that also she would be intrigued by the lyrics of Wish You Were Here.

So, so you think you can tell
Heaven from Hell, blue skies from pain
Can you tell a green field from a cold steel rail?
A smile from a veil? Do you think you can tell?

Did they get you to trade your heroes for ghosts?
Hot ashes for trees, hot air for a cool breeze?
Cold comfort for change? Did you exchange
A walk-on part in the war for a lead role in a cage?

How I wish, how I wish you were here
We're just two lost souls swimming in a fishbowl, year after year
Running over the same old ground, what have we found?
The same old fears, wish you were here

I read it out and then she took it home with her.

The next week she told me that it felt as if the song was written for her. Which kind of reflects what I have been saying here; we do in many ways create our own meaning for any work of art that somehow touches into our soul.

I wanted to know what she thought the song meant.

She shook her head. I could see she was getting upset.

“I don’t think I can say it. Except, you know. That bit about blue skies and pain. Heaven and Hell.”

She didn’t need to say any more. I knew what she meant. I had, in a small way, lived the blue skies and pain with her.