Publication
Article
Psychiatric Times
Practicing My Scales
Author(s):
When I learned my first scale at 45 I knew I would never rip loose and free like the pros who started as teenagers, when time didn’t matter and practicing was just another form of play.
When I learned my first scale at 45
I knew I would never rip loose and free
like the pros who started as teenagers,
when time didn’t matter and practicing
was just another form of play. While their
fingers explored the fret board’s mystery
I studied the music of Medicine, struggling
to find the melody in a patient’s history,
to sing it to teachers who seemed to know
the score of every disease by heart.
Ten thousand patients later, I see
a woman for evaluation, and she asks
about my orientation-Freud, Jung
psychopharmacology? And I play a riff,
a little tune that fits her story’s minor key
but contains a few notes of hope.
And we both feel the rhythm
in my reply, seated in mirror images,
nodding together, keeping time.
