Evelyn Glennie

[Diane]

Very cool.
She made it sound like a violin to keep the ears from getting bored.
Wonder what sort of neural tension she'll develop in a few years.

Those are astute observations/connections Barrett. We are all theremin players here. Some don't know they are, some do. Some attributes of the human theremin are:
1. it is the most sensitive of all
2. the most forgiving
3. the quietest - in fact you can barely hear it - you have to listen through your hands.

[Jon Newman]

One of the things that I noticed is how Pamelia transitioned from what appeared to be a state of composure and flow to what appeared to be a state of anxiety and back again as she played, talked and played again.

The first place I know that I heard a theremin was in Plan 9 From Outer Space by the brilliant Ed Wood.

[Diane]

An additional thought.
Not only are we (as therapists) "playing" the theremin in our patient, the patient is playing the one in us. We get to hear both while the patient only gets to hear ours, and has to listen much more carefully/differently to "hear"(feel) their own. Many can, some can't.

I looked around for how they work - still don't really get it.

[EricM]

You can make your own theremin.

[Jon Newman]

Hilarious Eric. I'm afraid the video of me making a theremin would look like me doing PT, collecting a paycheck and going to buy a theremin from that guy.

[Diane]

Wow.
His sounds like a kazoo instead of a violin..

I think I'll wait. If I need one, I'll try ready-made from Radio Shack or BestBuy. I don't think I can make anything harder than an Ikea bookshelf.

[caro]

Remember this guys?

Great info on how to listen.

[Barrett Dorko]

Thanks for bringing this back Carol Lynn. Glennie's insights into sensation are uniquely stated and listening to her changed me profoundly.

[Keith]

Thanks for the bump of this thread as it is some good food for thought and ties in with a BrainSciencePodcast archived episode (trying to go through Dr Campbell's library during my commute) pertaining to peripersonal space that I listened to earlier last week. That particular episode had me thinking about some of my favorite musicians (I am a rock guy, so I went right to drummers and guitarists)...which ties right into this thread. It is interesting that the 2 links I provided are to guys that are technically proficient, and although I find their performances to strike me "emotionally", I am also aware of some people who find such technical music as stale.

“We are the sound,” says Glennie. “I believe that we all have our own individual sound. We’re configured uniquely, we have a different weight, a different stance, we have a different means of attack, we approach the instruments differently but more importantly we hear the sound within ourselves differently.”

Perhaps we can say that as manual therapists we are at once the player and the instrument, and so is the patient. It gets complicated.

How Barrett's above posting struck me as profound was that while I was on my ride the other day (my commute is a 45 min bicycle ride along the Erie Canal trail, 3 days per week), I kept thinking of technically proficient musicians, but never the one person who I always thought sounded the best. For me, no one can match the tone and feel of Pink Floyd's David Gilmour...and while the taste for music is certainly subjective, I think that Glennie illustrates that there is something else here to witness. I have heard Comfortably Numb covered over and over and over (by exceptional musicians all over the world--I love youtube!), but it never sounds the same. I have always said to others that Gilmour's gift is his fingers and that even his guitar tech (techs, themselves, are typically good players of their own right) marvels at how the instrument sounds so different in Gilmour's hands than his own. This thread has me re-thinking the importance of the fingers, and focusing my thoughts on Mr. Gilmour's brain and how this relates to me as an aspiring manual clinician.

Indeed...complicated, Barrett.

[Diane]

Yup. It's complicated. In the end, whatever happens in any treatment encounter is an outcome of two unique nervous systems interacting with each other, not a set of protocols enacted by a zombie robot upon the anatomical body parts of a human in pain in an operative fashion.