Michele R.

Kelly 103

Michele R. Kelly

The Meaning in the Music

As the author struggles to make an impact on the world today,
she finds herself looking back on her past. In this essay, she analyzes
experiences that hover around her musical upbringing and comes to the
conclusion that they have all led her to the place she needs to be now.
Early in life, music became a foundation from which she emerged. In
playing the piano, she discovered a gift of self-expression as well as a
dawning acceptance of herself as a person. Ironically, some things she
used adamantly to reject have turned in retrospect into priceless trea-
sures. By sharing these reflections that aspire to be insightful, comical
at times, and inspirational, the author hopes that the reader will be
led to think about his or her own past and to see the personal value of
the meaning in the music.

It’s 7:00 p.m. in the city of Buffalo, NY. Families are sitting
down to their after-dinner fun, the TV goes on, board games are
brought to the table, and so on and so forth. In my house, the
familiar words ring up the stairs in my two-family household,
“Michele, it’s 7:00!” Once again, time is of the essence.
Tick . . . tock . . . tick . . . tock. Can you hear that? It is the
sound of the metronome. It keeps you in time with how the
music is supposed to be played. I don’t like the metronome.
Don’t give me rules when I want to express myself! Don’t make
me conform to someone else’s idea of what is “correct.” Let
me be me. Every other Saturday at the Villa Maria Institute of
Music, Mrs. Bommer would make me play a passage over and
over again until I got the notes, fingering, and timing perfect.
PERFECT. What if I didn’t want to be a mimic of Beethoven?
What if I wanted to appreciate Beethoven through the eyes of
Michele? Music should be relevant to the pianist first and THEN
to the teacher. (I understand this is a novel thought . . . ) But
tell me, who’s to say that Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, AND Chopin
didn’t know how to play their own music? Dare I even suggest
it? Would they understand that for me Beethoven’s Moonlight
American Imago, Vol. 66, No. 1, 103–109. © 2009 by The Johns Hopkins University Press

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Sonata should be at a slower tempo to emphasize the longing,

the desire, and the passion its notes hold? Would Beethoven
deny me my interpretation of his work?
Perhaps Melanie Klein would approve of my interpretation
of music. Play for her was acceptable. Play for her was learning.
Play was . . . is good. And dare I say, perhaps Ferenczi had the
right idea. Role reversal is key. What if the teacher became the
student and vice versa? I would have put Mrs. Bommer through
her paces. I would have taught her the meaning of music ac-
cording to me. “Faster . . . Slower . . . More Meaning . . . More
Feeling . . . !!!!” The hunter becomes the hunted. Maybe in my
young age, just maybe I did have something to offer. Something
to teach the teacher, but alas we shall never know.
I remember the days when creativity and self-expression
were forbidden. OK, maybe I exaggerate a little, but I am sure
I received a few frown faces on my report card in kindergarten
when I colored outside of the lines. Have I been a rebel since
birth and am I just now discovering this? I am sure many a
psychoanalyst would have something to say about this break-
through.
So, what does music mean to me? It means personal expres-
sion and private understanding. Music is a release from “what
you must do” and becomes “what you can do.” Unlike Noy,
Feder, or Graf (a few of my favorite theorists on the topic), I
believe music to be first and foremost very personal. It just so
happens that other people can hear it. When I played, day after
day and year after year, on the piano staring at that picture on
the wall before me in my aunt’s dining room for most of my
childhood, I did not like to be interrupted. To tell the truth, I
didn’t like the family to listen. How they could manage to go
about their daily lives without being driven to distraction by my
clamor, or rather my tickling of the ivory, I’ll never know, but it
would have suited me just fine to be on a desert island.
What, one might ask, did I do when it came time for re-
citals at Villa Maria? I groaned, and moaned, I procrastinated
until I was forced to play my music and play it properly. I never
wanted to play in front of a group of people, but my family
(particularly my mother) saw it differently. I was to perform,
and I was to show off my years of hard work. I was to wear my
pretty yellow dress with the white daisies on it and smile for the
 Michele R. Kelly 105

pictures and curtsey like a young lady after my performance.

(If you don’t believe me about the dress, I have pictures . . . )
But that wasn’t me. I learned how to curtsey as well as to walk
like a model at yet another school. I remember it to this day.
The fine institution of learning was called J’advance Finishing
School. That filled my “other” Saturday mornings when I wasn’t
going to piano lessons. Now, don’t get me wrong. I had my free
time when I was a child, but once you wake me up before the
crack of dawn and make me go to “school” on a weekend, the
rest of the day is shot. No child should be so lucky.
So I performed when I was supposed to perform and I
curtsied when I was supposed to curtsey, but what about the
rest of my musical career? Here’s where it gets interesting from
a self-discovery perspective. I enjoyed the piano most when I
was in the privacy of my own home, in sweat pants with no one
around but me. I played until my fingers pounded. I played to
forget the trials and tribulations of a teenager, than which noth-
ing could be worse—of course. I played to dream of loves to
come and experiences to befall me. At times, if I played softly,
I was sorry and wanted to take back what I had done or said. I
wanted the music to rewrite time and make me a gentler person.
If I played loudly, perhaps I wanted to be heard. I wanted to be
noticed, to be set apart from the crowd. I wonder today how all
this was supposed to happen in the confines of my home, but
nonetheless, it was what it was. I have to smile every so often
when I think of the times my aunt criticized my work. Oh, how
I hated it. Although my aunt took lessons (for a short while)
as well, it was well known in my family that the musical ability
skipped her generation. (Alright, I’ll admit that was a slightly
mean statement, albeit . . . true.) She would criticize and say,
for example, “If you just go over that passage several times and
play it slower, you’ll get it right,” or “That’s not how the song
goes, why don’t you play it the way you’re supposed to play it?”
This did nothing but make me more determined to play it my
way. They were MY hours of practice and MY punishment as a
child to be forced to play at recitals, so I was going to do this
my way come hell or high water in my home. I often wanted to
tell her that if she wanted to hear a piece of music performed
a particular way to play it herself, but the threat of my dad’s
leather belt and my ability to reason quickly led me to part with
106 The Meaning in the Music

that idea. Sure, I was never spanked a day in my life but the
threat was always there.
As I look back on those years, I think to myself, Was I an-
gry? Was I jealous? Angry because of the forced practices and
jealous because I couldn’t do what my friends were doing? It
was the worst during the summertime when the windows were
open and I could hear them outside running up and down the
block. Yet somehow, the very thing I said I hated the most, as I
grew older became the thing I missed the most. As I moved into
the later years of high school and then college, music was no
longer a requirement for me. I was no longer forced to practice
the Hannon scales until I could perform them perfectly. I was
allowed to take on different challenges, to pursue different
interests, to come (as they say) “into my own being.” So where
did the music go? And more importantly, what happened to its
meaning for me?
To put it bluntly, I lost the meaning. I seemed to forget how
to give myself to the music and just experience it as I wanted.
Deadlines, agendas, responsibilities, and yes, even goals clouded
my musical receptors. I think Madelon Sprengnether may have
the right idea in Crying at the Movies (2002). As Stephen Walrod
elaborates in his review of Sprengnether’s memoir, surrender-
ing to an experience can be overwhelming yet therapeutic. I
reflect on Walrod’s words:

The film experiences described by Sprengnether are

markers along a frightening, passionate odyssey that
takes up the major themes of our lives—death, sexuality,
intimacy, jealousy, guilt, religious faith, and creativity. . . .
Sprengnether believes that movies are particularly suited
for this purpose. A movie theater is a “liminal space”
situated between dream and reality. The movie theater is
just safe—and just scary—enough to breach our ordinary
defenses, she writes. In addition, by virtue of it being a
darkened space where people sit quietly together, the
movie theater becomes what D. W. Winnicott termed a
“holding environment,” a place of containment during
moments of intense emotional experience. (2005, 139)
 Michele R. Kelly 107

Now, although my music expression is not derived from a trau-

matic experience (as far as I know), there are some elements
of this passage that I can strongly identify with. Liminal space
is an intriguing term to me. I understand it in terms of musi-
cal “space” as well. A safe yet dubious place where one floats
between dreams and reality. Not knowing where the music will
take you. Not knowing if it will produce satisfaction, anger, re-
sentment—that is the scary part for me. I think about this “space”
and cannot ignore the significance of time. I would venture to
say that time was a critical component of Sprengnether’s experi-
ence. She had to be in the right time and place to allow herself
to experience her emotions and relive the tragic events in her
life. This speaks to me very clearly. In my case, I cannot “rush”
my musical experience. It is a gift given to me to understand
when I am ready for it. As I have been attempting to remind
myself of late, I cannot force myself to be in this “liminal space,”
but I can embrace it when it comes unbidden.
Perhaps what I am to learn from my love of music does not
come when I am ready for it, but when it is ready for me. I battle
with myself daily because I feel I have lost what used to be mine,
lost what used to console me. Though perhaps “it” is not lost,
but waiting. Waiting for a time when I can once again appreci-
ate what I feel. Where I can give myself over to the music and
learn the lessons that are there to be taught. For Sprengnether, I
would guess that to try to grasp the meaning prematurely might
be the equivalent of going to a movie theater blindfolded and
with one’s ears plugged. The senses are not prepared to receive
those “moments of intense emotional experience.”
Reading the memoirs of mental illness by Kay Jamison
(1995) and Elyn Saks (2007) has further helped open me to
the possibility that I am right where I am supposed to be musi-
cally. In one sense, I feel I have no right to compare my quest
for “something more” musically to Saks’s quest. She has battled
for years with schizophrenia, a life-changing disease. But our
quests do share some similarities. There is nothing more frus-
trating than to want what is seemingly not in your control. The
torture that a person will undergo to achieve her goals can be
maddening. In my case, the torture is self-inflicted. For many
years, I have chastised myself for not holding onto my musical
experiences. At times they are still so vivid in my mind, especially
108 The Meaning in the Music

the way I would feel after I poured my heart out on the piano.
It was so draining and so rewarding all in the same breath. I
thought that I could have those feelings back anytime I wanted
them. But when those experiences seemed to become less and
less frequent, I began to tell myself I had “lost” what I now call
a gift. But what if I’m not supposed to have that experience
right now? What if I am meant to have other gifts in my life to
lead me to be the person I will become? In an unexpected way,
Saks has guided me to a forgiving place in my life. Forgiveness
of myself . . . no more apologies.
Although it will be difficult (I’ve had many years of prac-
tice—no pun intended), I will make every effort to appreciate
the gifts that I currently have. I have avenues of expression
now that many would consider a luxury. For example, I am
free (for the most part) to take any classes I want to take. Be-
ing at a university that welcomes and encourages creativity is a
marvelous thing. How many people in their lives can say they
have come to know scholars from Ivy League schools? If you
take a poll of African-American women, how many could say
that they met the Dalai Lama? I’ve been given an opportunity
to develop one of my greatest assets, my mind. The choice is
up to me as to how I do it.
So far, I have found my new medium within the edifice of
psychoanalysis. To me, it’s like coming home to a place that
you have never been before. It is challenging, rewarding, time-
consuming, draining, frustrating, exciting, overwhelming, and
fascinating—all at the same time. Perhaps my purpose right now
is to exchange my musical expression and gift and replace it
or enhance it, should I ever go back to it, with my experiences
today. Does this seem a little far-fetched? Perhaps. Does it make
sense to me here and now? Definitely.
To me, meaning in music is more than just the notes that
someone plays. It is the journey on which music takes you and
the experience that it gives you. Meaning in music is about
memories and unanswered questions and daring to dream
dreams. It is whatever we as listeners want it to be. For me, music
is an expression of the heart. It gives me joy and gives me grief.
My experience with notes, melodies, and sonatas set me free
somehow. I recently feared that my freedom was gone and that
I had lost the gift of it forever; however, I am beginning to see
 Michele R. Kelly 109

that the freedom has returned and possibly expanded to other

areas in my life. I may one day come back to my music and to
the scales and hours of practice that used to haunt me, but I
think it will be different then. I may savor the melody or despise
the refrain, but when all is said and done the experience will
be changed from what it used to be. Those times of immense
joy or sadness will be cherished—as a true gift. A gift that fits
perfectly with what I have learned thus far. Enjoy the moment
and don’t wish for what is in the past because you may miss out
on your wishes in the present.
Graduate Institute of the Liberal Arts
S415 Callaway Center
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322
mkelly2@emory.edu

References
Jamison, Kay Redfield. 1995. An Unquiet Mind: A Memoir of Moods and Madness. New
York: Vintage, 1996.
Saks, Elyn R. 2007. The Center Cannot Hold: My Journey through Madness. New York:
Hyperion.
Sprengnether, Madelon. 2002. Crying at the Movies: A Film Memoir. St. Paul: Greywolf
Press.
Walrod, Stephen. 2005. Review of Crying at the Movies: A Film Memoir, by Madelon
Sprengnether. American Imago, 62:137–42.
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