This project involves multiple levels of arts-based methods. First, music is shared as a tool for me to communicate with the dying and provide comfort. I have also described my experiences with the dying in a narrative format and recorded this story digitally. A recording of live flute music (played by this writer), the narrative recording, and public access images chosen to depict imagery related to my experiences with the dying have been compiled into a digital story titled “Musical Conversations with the Dying.” Furthermore, in order to engage in a deeper process of reflection, I wrote a poem to analyze the content of this digital story. 

     After writing the poem, I looked for repetition of words and underlying meaning in the poem to identify salient themes. These themes are: Beauty. Peace. Silence. Mirroring. Presence. Breath. Meet them where they are.

     Interpreting multiple creative mediums through this project offered a much greater opportunity for reflection and connection of ideas. I was particularly surprised by the theme “mirroring.” This was a theme I was not expecting and had not consciously thought about. However, this theme was brought up in the poetic analysis and was depicted by images of two empty chairs mirroring each other in the digital story.

     I was also surprised that so much of the content was similar. The images chosen in the video had similar content to the poem, and I didn’t intentionally pick the images for any reason other than wanting to represent the dying process. This may demonstrate that the process of “knowing” can occur at an unconscious level, and that abstract art forms have a way of connecting our knowledge of and relationship with things. At the same time, I am surprised by the various types of content which occur so close to each other within the digital story.  At once, there is both a choppy, chaotic theme while there is also a vastly open, unknown, and peaceful theme. They both exist in the video and poem. These themes exist very close to one another, so close in fact it should be uncomfortable, yet somehow they co-exist as neighbors. These themes co-exist without being disruptive, and as the observer I was not initially conscious of how close these contrasting themes were with one another.

     The content analysis of this digital story and poem are fascinating when thinking about the power of death as a teacher of life. What makes death so powerful? Perhaps this content analysis reveals it is because death transcends the two most disparate themes in life (chaos and peace). Somehow, in death, there is both an acceptance that these opposing themes exist as neighbors at the same time that there is a union between the two.  

     Poetry, music, art in general… express more than our intellectual strivings to communicate through words. Art is also a form of transcendence, similar to what death seems to be sharing as revealed through the content analysis of this digital story. The wordless communication of the dying may be revealing the most powerful truth.

Musical Conversations with the Dying.mp4