In May of 2021, while away for a birthday weekend far out of the city with a long-time friend and our families, I found myself bouncing some ideas off her over an early-morning cup of coffee on a farmhouse “stoep”.  I was facing a rather painful ending in my own life, but had taken enough time (many years) to work through it and I was explaining that amidst all the difficult feelings, it felt like something else was stirring.  Its essence was a holding space for the many different areas of my work-life, a thought about how they all held together and a way for me to reflect these areas in a professional way. It’s name was a-muse because of all the words that were held inside of that one word that related to my work spaces and interests.

I remember so clearly saying “I just love the idea of many corkboards and being able to pin up ideas that are not necessarily perfectly honed.” In reality, my home is filled with corkboards. I share my home with my two boys and between the three of us, we have seven: one in my studio, one as you walk into our kitchen, three in the passageway outside our bedrooms and one in each of the boys’ rooms.  I love them for their ability to hold both the more left-brain type schedules, timetables and year planners as well as the more right brain type photos, memories, dreams and quotes.  And I really appreciate that they can change as I need them to or when I tire of them. We discussed how I love to write but could not imagine having time to write anything more than short pieces at this stage of my bursting-at-the-seams life.  Short pieces of writing, mostly for myself, that others could read if they wanted to – pinned in cyberspace to an imaginary corkboard.

Others would call this a blog? That sounded way too intimidating and like it came with deadlines and perfection parameters.  But as I continued down the road that has led to this launch of a-muse, I made peace with the fact that I’d call it a blog if it could be my very own blog with my own parameters and expectations.  

 So here we are – a piece of writing, a blog post, some thoughts on a cyberspace corkboard – and there is even one on each website page (insert delighted squeal here!)

I would not blame you for doing some basic calculations and working out that May 2021 and May 2024 have a three-year gap between them.  Apart from the bursting-at-the-seams life to blame for this, there was still some work that needed to happen.  

To any outsider, there is no rocket science in seeing that the various “bubbles” (aspects…parts…areas) of my work-life are connected by music.  Performing musician, music teacher, music therapist – the common thread is clearly music.  Hopefully the name “a-muse” reflects this obviously enough.  Since I can remember, there was music. Since I can remember, I was in music and music was in me.  I sang and danced and listened to music.  I started the violin at the age of five, the piano at the age of seven.  I sang with my brother, with the choir, with the vocal ensemble, in the bath, as I walked home from ballet, at the bottom of my pool to watch the bubbles rise to the surface.  I broke my arm in my first year of violin lessons and continued to pitch up for lessons to do the right-arm bow work on my lesson partner’s violin while she placed the left-hand fingers down on the neck of the violin.  I could never do justice to the degree to which music was all around me and I was around music in just one paragraph.

However, there is another part of me that may not be as obvious to the onlooker.  While music is very definitely my language, there is something much greater to which I feel called.  It is in essence, quite simply… to connect to the humans around me.  I speak a lot of the value of my “village” and the importance of being part of a “village”.  I could quite easily go a week without making music (although I may struggle not to hum at least).  However, 1 week without eye contact, a smile from or for a stranger, a hug, an opportunity to listen to a pupil or make sense of someone’s struggles and I would be in real trouble. 

It is the connection with humans, midst this crazy world that we get to inhabit for a while, that calls my music to its purpose. I struggle to perform without seeing the audience’s response or at least catch the eyes of one of my fellow performers.  Three hours alone in a practice room would finish me off.  I cannot teach Mozart to a pupil without first understanding the week or life that they are bringing along with them into my teaching studio.  I cannot impose a teaching system onto a child if I believe that they have agency and my job is to discover what kind of music brings them to life.  I was torn between heading out of school into a music degree or into a psychology degree – I landed up in music performance and found my way to a Music Therapy Masters.  It all makes so much sense and I hope that as you scroll around the a-muse website, you will manage to see that while music is the language in which I am most fluent, I speak it in order to connect, inspire and transform rather than for mastery of the art-form alone.

I hope you will return to visit the a-muse website, if not to show it to someone who is looking for something that it may offer, then at least to take a look at what I may have pinned up on one of my cyberspace corkboards.  I have taken many, many hours, months (ok, so it all totals three years!) with the skilled Emma from FRESHSAGE, who has patiently dealt with my ever-changing opinions on name, logo, brand concept, colours and how I would like to depict that which I do and about which I am passionate.  I am grateful for her immense patience and knowledge.  Now after three years, it is time to get this show on the road….(translate: it is time to get this website and its blog into cyberspace!)