Proceedings, Oxford, UK (2002) - World Federation of Music Therapy

with some of their songs, which G. offered to bring me on my return
from the summer holidays, so that we could listen to it together.
Then we listened to some songs by Beatles, "Penny Lane" and
"Strawberries Field Forever" from Magical Mystery Tour, and, to end
the meeting, we listen again to Exit Music by the Radiohead, during
which G. observed: “The record is beautiful, but absolutely, excessively
and exclusively sad; unfortunately -he added- there is a stereotype
according to which, in order to write or do something intelligent, you
have to be sad and gloomy, whilst, if you write cheerful things, they are
not considered intelligent”. G. concluded the session with a question:” Is
it possible for me to create something intelligent and deep, but also
cheerful and not so sad as the music I have preferred to listen till now?”
We said goodbye to each other in quite an intense way: it was the last
session before the summer holidays .G. seemed to be moved and he
probably wanted to draw out that moment; a little joke from the educator
lightened the situation and G. went off smiling.
What he had experienced in those few sessions had already allowed him
a global rediscovery of his personal involvement in the clinical work at
the Centre and also a more specific way to represent his borderline
existential experience, just like the forms of the pieces he had chosen,
forms that either came at the end of a creative process or recalled its
inevitable breaking up by their lyrics, which did not tell anything, but just
cried.
Thanks to the musical experience it had been possible to overcome the
dichotomy comprehensible-incomprehensible as a key to interpret G.’ s
1992