The Wand or The Baton

Overture

I’m an avid lover of all music, all styles and genres, from ancient to modern. Plus I’m an avid lover of language and, like with music, all the nuts and bolts of language.

Now the interesting thing about them both is that they are, essentially, a means of communication – pure and simple. On a micro and a macro level they are both human vehicles for expressing ourselves to the world – to our fellow humans. When the two are put together, through even the simplest of vehicles such as song for example, the potency of the message, the communication, is doubled. Words and music can have both a magical and an intellectual effect, they bring us meaning on both a sensual as well as a cognitive level. 

Driving  (Con moto)

I like to tell stories, to use metaphor in particular, to bring a broadened perspective to clients who are looking to change some things in certain areas of their lives.

We all use the narrative of our lives to help make sense of things – of the world, if you like – so we can move forwards along our various pathways. We generally like to seek the familiar and the comfortable – for we all know how to ‘manage’ the familiar, don’t we?
Sometimes the pathways we travel contain ruts and potholes – but if the road is familiar, then we know where they are and we can steer round them, avoid them. Even if we happen to drive over them and feel the ‘bump’, then we’ll assure ourselves that our vehicle is tough, our tyres are strong enough and though there may be a little collateral damage – that’s ok, because we’re still able to get from A to B.
Now, occasionally we’ll break down or get stuck – mainly because of the way we’ve driven our metaphorical vehicle, the way we’ve ‘conducted’ ourselves. We’ve suddenly gone ‘off-road’ through bad navigation or poor driving and we’ve wound up amongst some ‘familiar’ that is no longer familiar! It’s our driving, our narrative, our habits that have got us into this particular place, quagmire, quicksand ... you name it!

Now, anyone who has ever got a vehicle stuck in mud knows that trying to get out using the way of driving that got us in there in the first place, is only going to end up with the wheels spinning and the vehicle sinking even further in.

We need a helping hand to push us, or tow us, out of the issue.
Or ...
We need to change the nature of what’s happening between the tyres and the boggy surface. This will change the vehicle’s perspective about its interface with the world.

The Music of Our Lives

For each one of us, the course of our lives is backed by a soundtrack. There is a music to our lives that accompanies us every step of the way.

When our lives are in tune, and we are playing along to that music – then everything is as good as it can be. We are an amazing and accomplished orchestra, artfully, effortlessly, sensitively, joyfully, sympathetically and humbly playing the symphony of our lives.

Every small part of ourselves is a separate instrument, each playing its own section of the score – sometimes in solo, sometimes in ensemble. Sometimes playing SO well that there is no need to even look at the score – we are playing intuitively, playing from the heart.

However, things can happen to the score that we know – or we might be required to play some new and unfamiliar music. A breeze might blow the papers around; some of the instruments may go slightly out of tune. Now the music doesn’t quite feel the same, or sound as good.

Another thing that can happen is that one particular instrument or section of the orchestra may decide to play in a different way - to be more dominant, less sympathetic, to be ‘out of sync’ with the other instruments.

And so on ...

I think you can get the notion that how our own ‘personal’ orchestra plays the music of our lives can – as a performance – be measured from moment to moment, on the very broadest spectrum. It is a spectrum that ranges from the most profound and sublime, right through to total and utter discordant chaos; from agony to ecstasy; from heaven to hell.

Conducting or Magic

And, so it is, when their wheels are spinning and some of life’s music doesn’t sound so good, that people will seek out that ‘helping hand’ that I mentioned earlier.

And for some I am privileged to be – for a short period of time in their lives – the ‘helping hand’.
Now, although I work a lot with clients of all ages, and in a wide variety of contexts, I may be a helping hand – but I am certainly no magician.

For me, magic is in the eye of the beholder – rather like beauty.

Magicians perform their magic in the eyes of the beholders and, some might say, that certain hypnotic and changework processes are magic, also. The thing is that all that seems magic is mere process – it is the perception of the beholder or the recipient that pivots the processes into magic, usually seemlessly, depending upon the craft and artistry of the magician.

For my clients to change the sounds of their performance, to get out of their stuck situation, there are certain things that need to be in place in our relationship.
If my helping hand takes the form of towing them out of the muddy field, or of tuning their instruments for them – then very soon they will land up exactly back in the wrong place again. Doing it for them, applying Magic, gives them a solution that will be very short lived.

My helping hand needs to take a different form – and I need to be more in the nature of a conductor for their orchestra. I need to be the facilitator, the focal point, for their performance. They need to be ‘in sync’, which is my part in the process - and they need to be in tune which is their part. They have to be acutely aware of their own instrument so they can adjust it so that it sounds right at any time they need to.  That is their responsibility.

My part then remains the interface between their playing and their performing; I am their conductor until such time as they can see, hear and sense their own performance – and be happy with its quality and return to their best playing of the music of their lives.

The Wand or the Baton

There is a great deal of similarity to both the wand and the baton. – yet, when all is said and done, these are just diverse labels for identical artefacts.

Place the baton into the hand of a magician or a wand into the hand of a conductor and what happens to the meanings we have ascribed?

And will they, as holders, perform differently?