Music Therapy Clinician: Supporting reflective clinical practice Volume 1 | Page 4

Editors’ Reflections Roia Rafieyan, MA, MT-BC, Editor-in-Chief Saying It Out Loud “I think you should start a zine.” My friend and, at the time, colleague, Judy and I were sitting in our shared office, and she’d made the suggestion after she heard me carry on, yet again, about how frustrating it was to read research and more research in the music therapy journals — much of it having little to do with my daily life as a music therapist. It all felt so…sanitized. And disconnected. It was more than that though. I wanted to read about what other music therapists were doing — not the latest and greatest activities. I wanted to know: how did they react to their work? Did they have the same experiences I did? What kinds of struggles did they encounter? What were the moments in their work that truly moved them? How were their ideas about music therapy shifting? What were the circumstances? What kinds of songs came out of their hard days of being a music therapist? “What’s a zine?” I’d never heard of such a thing. “It’s kind of like…an underground magazine. And it’s opinionated.” Underground…hm. And, er, I’m certainly opinionated. I liked the idea! Obviously these weren’t conversations people were having in the mainstream publications. But they were conversations I needed to have. People I needed to hear from. But I still wasn’t clear what starting a zine would entail. So instead I started a blog. I figured it was a way to start the process. And maybe, just by starting to talk about the things I wanted to talk about in blog form, other people would chime in and we’d finally get started having the conversations I craved. I blogged away for quite a while, petering out somewhat over the last few years because other writing 2|Page projects had to take priority. But I keep at it, and even though, eight years later, I’ve only just hit one hundred public followers, the people who read what I share tell me, “yes! Thanks for saying this out loud.” Yes. Saying it out loud. Something my clinical supervisor said to me years ago, and I’ve remembered and shared it repeatedly (especially with my supervisees) is, “Roia, sometimes the job of a therapist is to say the unsayable.” Woah! That can be frightening. At the same time, not saying what needs to be said is stagnating…to my clients, to me, and to our profession. When I spent some time as newsletter editor for the New Jersey music therapy association (NJAMT) I put together a fairly standard nice music therapy association newsletter, complete with reports from the various executive board members, job listings and the periodic interview. And it was…nice. It was functional, and the information needed to be disseminated. At the time we were focused on gathering support for music therapy from legislators, so our goal was to demonstrate our professionalism through our newsletter. Now it’s 2015. We are remarkably close to achieving licensure. Thanks to the work of many music therapists, not just those in New Jersey, but all over the United States, legislators now seem to know we exist. It’s an exciting time for our field. I suspect this is, at least in part, due to the significant changes in the way information is shared. When something new happens in the music therapy community, it can easily be posted, tweeted, or simply forwarded by email to a wide network of people, including our elected officials. This wasn’t nearly as possible even ten years ago. The role of the state association newsletter has also changed. This type of publication used to be the main means by which we communicated state-related information to the music therapy community. Now, with email blasts and social media, people are aware of employment opportunities, and they are immediately invited to take part in Calls to Action arriving electronically. Enter the journal-zine. The journal-zine is a clinically-focused, online, open-access publication to reflect (on the experiences we have when we work), to listen (to conversations between music therapists), to share (the music created in connection with the clinical work we do), and to pose questions (the ones that have come up as we engage with our clients). In a way, we aim to recreate the intimacy of a music therapy session in terms of how information is presented. And so, we’re calling this journal-zine: Music Therapy Clinician. Because you, in your role as a music therapy clinician, are our focus. We want to know what you’re experiencing, discovering, surprised by, frustrated by, and curious about. Who have you become? How has your music changed? What are you learning? What have you been listening to, playing, writing, reading, or thinking about? And we invite you here to say it out loud! Contact Roia [email protected]