Valuing the relational over the objective.

Writing this blog I’m listening to a performance of Bach piano Sonatas. It’s okay, I do that. 
      There’s something different about this particular rendition of the Bach. It’s not metronomically rigid, as Bach is often played. It lives, it breathes, it reveals a Bach who was human rather than just mechanically and mathematically precise. And it says the same about the performer, a young Russian pianist apparently taking the world by storm, Daniel Trifinov.
      Upon hearing this recording (you can probably get it on a music streaming service and might be worth the listen while you read this blog) I find irony, wit, tenderness and, a touch of sarcasm in Bach’s music. I’d never known it was there. The music lays low and then leaps. It is at one moment introspective and then next engaging. 
      But I have a confession to make. I struggle to remind myself that behind each gift of art (musical, literary, visual) is a creator, or a re-creator. In that piece of music, and in that book, and in that painting is the presence of a person using all their intelligence and wisdom to declare to others what they perceive and feel. That person is reaching out to share that perception, that feeling. When I no longer consider the painting, the song, the novel as an object but see it as gift of human connection it helps me to be more human as well.
      Lately I have been thinking about the listeners and the readers gracing my journey as a musician and writer. My listeners and readers sort themselves out … take the coffee shop as an example. Over the course of a Saturday afternoon a couple of dozen or more patrons come in. Most relegate my music to the background, going about their scrolling and table conversations. And that’s okay. Occasionally, someone acts surprised that the music is live rather than through a stereo system. Some people are impressed that I play only original music. But every Saturday afternoon I notice one or two (and sometimes a lot more) intentional listeners. They have a far away look on their faces as they orient toward my piano. I see flickers of emotion cross their faces, emotion that I’m feeling as I play and was distilled into the creation of the piece. They have set aside the clutter of their minds and the cacophony of our culture and let themselves enter wordless relationship with me. 
      In the connection with that intentional listener I am less alone in the universe. I am less bothered by the cacophony of too much else that wants to intrude. In that connection a sense of what it means to be human breathes through.
      I have some absolutely wonderful folk who support my writing. When they read and comment it is clear that they get it, get the sense of what it means for me to explore the world of relationship and circumstance through my characters. As I write and self-edit, I smile at the sarcasm of one character, tear up at the heartache of another, rail against the arrogance and entitlement of yet someone else. When one of my readers comments on that same humanity emerging within my characters I feel validated. What they perceive suggests that I’ve been able to figure out some of the perplexity of the human condition sufficiently to represent it in my writing. 
      And while creating original music and writing fiction is essentially a solitary activity, the responses of the intentional listener and the intuitive beta-reader lift the whole endeavour to the relational rather than the objective. 

And that takes me back. Valuing the relational over the objective was the theme of my professional life.
      When I was educated in the field of psychology I came through a science orientation. When it comes to human mental and behavioural characteristics we psychologists have prided ourselves in how we can measure things. We have loved reducing the human to the numerical. We valued using complicated mathematical formulas to determine what varied alongside of what and what influenced what. We prided ourselves in taking an empirical (scientific) approach instead of the philosophical and theological perspectives on the human condition that had come before.
      It all seemed to make good sense until I got to the therapy room. There, one-to-one while trying to figure how to deal with a client’s subjectivity in navigating a complex context, I found that the things we knew from the science of psychology didn’t carry the load. Sure, we could know those things for sure (or we thought we did) but so much of that knowledge pales into insignificance compared to the sort of knowing needed to effect therapeutic change.
      Sadly, psychologists are well trained, perhaps overtrained, to consider the human as an object: objectifying life adaptive struggles into mental illnesses, reducing suffering to symptom, objectifying human attributes into personality types. Objects can be acted upon, manipulated to achieve outcomes. Therapists learn powerful techniques to do that manipulation. On the surface it might look like it works. We can even run a little test that demonstrates changes in scores. According to the numbers generated, we can feel better.
      But does objectification heal? Does it foster growth and deepen wisdom?
      I came to believe that healing, growth and wisdom arise from relationship, not from outcome-oriented manipulation. I chose to leave behind the theoretically-based worksheets, the carefully constructed protocols. What makes the difference is being present with intention on the wellbeing of the other person. The knowledge and skills brought to the session by the psychologist are a part of that being present, as is the care to act respectfully and ethically. However those things are insufficient unless a relationship is fostered to unleash within the client the capacity to heal, to be responsible and do what is needed to address the circumstances of their lives. 
      And now, at this creative time in my life, I discover that music would be just notes and fiction would be just words without the relational presence of the listener and reader. Thanks for reading!

Clickable links to previous blogs

September 2024 - Emergent from the creative process. www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/09-2024
August 2024  On Beauty  www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/08-2024
July 2024 - Friends  www.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/07-2024
May 2024 - In the zone
April 2024 - How creativity happens ... well, for me anywayclick-click.html
March 2024 - Your bridge to cross
February 2024 - A little Deeper into the human condition
January 2024 - On Darkness
​December 2023 - Note Perfect ... or not!
November 2023 - Just noteswww.twiltondale.ca/blog/archives/04-2024
October 2023 - About endings
​September 2023 - Sacred ground
​August 2023 - Are we there yet? 
​July 2023 - How smart is SMART? 
June 2023 - Only half there
May 2023 - Who gets to write the story?
April 2023 - Intersubjectivity. Hunh?
​​March 2023 - A disturbing trend 
February 2023 - About being in the middle
January 2023 - Can we have a little heart here please?
December 2022 - A story about story
November 2022 - Facing One's Fears
October 2022 - Transitional folk
September 2022 - Transitions
​August 2022 —At the other end of life's journey
July 2022—The problem with what emerges.
June 2022 — So who am I doing this for anyway?
May 2022 - Wait for it ... wait ... 
April 2022 — Someone called me a Nazi.
March 2022 — Shush! Don't tell anyone.
February 2022 — So does life imitate art? Well, maybe sometimes. 
January 2022 — The two most powerful lines in the book.
December 2021 — About time and being human.
November 2021 — Not a tidy little murder mystery
October 2021 — Flow versus focus. 
​September 2021 -- It's beautiful because it tells the truth. ​​