On incarcerating a friend ...

Recently I incarcerated a friend.
    For the purpose of this blog I’ll call him Laird. Laird has always been able to calm me when I’ve been stressed. Additionally, he’s taken me to some wild and beautiful places. 
    Why would I ever do such a thing?
    Laird is not a people friend but a musical one, a sequence of riffs with a harmonic and rhythmic structure. Laird’s incarceration was not behind bars but between bar lines. My incarceration involved stretching him out on the musical staff as a line of black dots.
    Laird has enjoyed freedom of movement for years, ever deepening his lyricism and quirkiness. When I play him, he has a decidedly Celtic character, always eliciting feelings of wistful contentment. The folk at the coffeeshop really like him.
    In incarcerating Laird to lay on the lines and spaces of a musical score I can pass him forward to be played by others. Thanks to his incarceration he’s going to be played in an arrangement for handbells, a solo ringer playing his riffs while I provide the accompanying harmony on the digital piano.
    But it all has been incredibly hard, this incarceration. And I know to call it that is totally irrational, but it’s how I felt doing it. 
    Upon reflection, I believe it was the right thing to do. I also think it’ll be good for Laird. 

I’m doing something else different in this month’s blog, riding it piggyback on a previous one. I’ve appended below my blog from January entitled “On being right, wrongly.” If you’re still intrigued by the ideas for this month, or you just need to have another cup of coffee and something to read while you enjoy it, it’ll be there for you. 
    
So, getting back to Laird. 
    I discovered something in creating Laird’s musical score with the help of a musician skilled in arranging for the handbells. When I’m composing music I don’t always put the same number of beats in each measure. Sometimes there will be four, sometimes three, sometimes five. After I got Laird’s sequence of notes down, the arranger placed it into proper musical notation. To match my rhythm in playing Laird he had to put in bars of 3/4 and 5/4 timing as well as the 4/4. 
    My arranger friend assures me that some other musical compositions (the formal, serious kind of music) have different time signatures within the composition. However, a part of me wishes Laird had naturally laid himself out in an orderly pattern with a consistent beat throughout. So we’re working on it. In asking other musicians to play Laird it would only seem right and proper that his riffs would read in a more consistent fashion like that.
    But another part of me is delighted Laird moves to his own rhythmic structure when he’s just with me. That feels good too. Which brings me back to the theme of the earlier blog (the one you are going to read next). There’s a significant difference between right and good.
    The difference comes down to context. If our context is collective, rightness of behaviour serves the benefit of all. As a society, we benefit from everyone stopping at stoplights. Amateur musicians, like our handbell ensemble, will more easily handle a musical score with the same number of beats to a bar. However, if our context is interpersonal goodness is important. Goodness allows us adapt to the intrinsic and unique spirit of the other. That’s what happens with my Laird when I play him solo. 
    We need to strive to do the right thing in society but need to strive to do good things in relationships. 
    
My experience as a psychologist also had to balance right and good. I had to abide by the ethical codes and culture of my profession, both were very focused on whether or not individual practitioners were doing the right thing. But the therapy room was a place of conversation with one other person, a dance of interlacing subjectivities. I had to be good there. While I invariantly engaged some rightnesses as defined by my profession (e.g. respecting personal boundaries, focusing only on the wellbeing of the client) some other things, things typically labeled as the right thing to do, had to give way to make room for goodness. Right labelling (diagnosis) was less important than truly understanding the subjective distress of the client. A therapy protocol designated as “best practice”, and thus the right approach, may be ineffective or harmful given the personality and context of the individual. 
    Let’s think of rightness and goodness as inhabiting two different realms. Rightness engages linear causality: we do this to that to get a result. If it works, then it was the right thing to do. On the other hand, goodness works within complex systems such that each good input filters into the output of a network of dynamic, interacting variables. 
    Within the complexity of human relationships acts of goodness beget more goodness, contributing to and altering the emergent properties of the complex system. Emergent properties of a complex human system would include wellness, emotional richness and balance, and responsible behaviour. Acts of goodness may take on many forms including kindness and graciousness, but also truthfulness, good personal boundaries and refusal to take part in toxic or harmful interactions. 
        
So getting back to my friend, Laird. One of the things I can be good about is letting Laird be different when he’s being played by others. In our culture it is expected that music is learned from a written score, practiced and performed. So in the context of how music is generally heard, what I did is the right thing to do.
    In the long run, incarcerating Laird has provided him with yet a new freedom, to enter new imaginations through handbells rather than just my piano. Perhaps he needn’t be bound by the wistful contentment he has always been with me. And that’d be a good thing too.
    
Now onto the next column, previously posted in January 2026.

About being right, wrongly
​
So it happened again. You’d think I’d learn, eh?
    A couple of months ago I blogged about a coffeeshop listener who wanted me to play the song I’d played a year before with fairies in it. A few weeks ago someone wanted the song with the bubbles. Just to be clear, fairies and bubblies had never been a inspiration for any song I’d composed. After trying out different ones with my listeners I was able to locate the songs inspiring those unique subjective experiences. Now I feel their fairy-ishness or ebullience when I play them. Those songs have come to mean something different for me based on the experience of them by others.
    Oh, and then there was the song I’d always associated with the wind swept heather of Scotland. It took a listener into the tropical forest of Jamaica. 
    What am I to make of this? I used to wish people would just get it right, recognize what I was describing when I composed a song. But not any longer; now I think its kind of fun when they don’t. I’m delighted when the mood and impetus within a song transports to different places than I could have imagined on my own. My creative endeavours are turning the listener’s direction of focus inward, to get them more in touch with what has meaning for them.
    Let’s call this in-sight.
    Let me reflect on just how loaded that word happens to be.


Early on in my career as a psychologist I was trained on something called a mental status examination. I was required to conduct one of these on every client. As well as querying usual mental health symptoms (things like sleeping, eating, activity level, flow of thought, distressing emotions) it had me check for client insight. In that setting the term “insight” had a very specific meaning. The client was insightful if they agreed with what the psychiatrist had diagnosed them to be and would comply with treatment as their only hope in getting well.
    Later in my career I discovered there was an entirely different use of the word insight, one quite the opposite of agreeing with the psychiatrist. Insight emerged within clients through thoughtful evaluation of their personal motivations, values and habitual patterns of behaviour and relationship. The insight orientation in psychotherapy involved respectful questioning and gentle feedback. Through that process, the client discovered something uniquely their own, something they could act on it responsibly triggering personal growth. 
    You can see the contrast.
    However, the culture and regulation of my former profession however was not inclined toward the latter as I was. It was about doing things right. We were to make the right diagnosis and then apply the right treatment regime. When it came to ethics, the right thing was rote following of codes, standards, guidelines and best practices. 
    Over the course of my career I began to recognize the limitations and harm that such rightness can involve. Enacting externally defined rightness shuts down one’s own critical thought, negates creative solutions to unique circumstances, and disqualifies nuance. 
    The alternative? Rather than striving to be the arbiter of the right for my clients, as a psychologist I encouraged them to find what was good within them, essentially learning to grow their own sanity and functionality.
    Often clients would ask what was the right decision in a particular situation. My typical response was that rather than a right decision the client needed to make the first of a series of good decisions. Each good decision would move them closer to what would eventually resolve the problem. A good decision was in keeping with their values, opened up options and, provided them with more resources to address the larger issues they faced. 
    Working this way I needed to get to know the uniqueness of the client, not reduce them to a single dimension of disorder or deficit. It helped to know the pace of life change for the client and what gave them a sense of meaning and satisfaction. Sure I could suggest options and ideas but I did so not to solve the problem but open up new possibilities. Typically the client came up with more suitable directions than I could have, their perspective and possibilities triggered by things I’d suggested. 
    
I have debated what title I would put on this blog. I really wanted to call it “Standing up to the tyranny of the right”. Of course, that would’ve immediately been considered a political statement (and for those who know me, there would be knowing nod of the head).
    There are times when holding to what is correct is apt and helpful. Our national neighbour to the south is providing us with a cautionary tale about about firing scientists and eliminating regulation for health and safety. We’ll see how that turns out.
    As a psychologist I often found myself occupying two worlds. Not ones defined by right and left but two worlds were defined by distance, two meters distance. 
    Let’s consider the inner one. Within the sphere of about two meters around me I could influence for change. Inside that sphere I can recognize nuance, enact sensitivity, and celebrate emergent awareness. It’s the zone of conversation. Psychotherapy was always just a conversation for me with my clients, but a vulnerable and emotionally intimate one. Within that sphere it’s counterproductive and disrespectful to simply be right about things. Therein, it is especially important to be guided by values of respect for the dignity and self-determination of others, clear thought, and compassion. 
    Then there is the other sphere, the one two meters out. In interfacing with others out there, I want to make correct choices and have others do so as well, you know about things like driving on the same side of the road as other drivers going my direction and stopping at stoplights.
    What I treasure about playing original jazz in the coffeeshop is my listener and I are firmly within that in-close sphere of connection, a place where their experience of my music can enrich my own. Neat!