Playing Music as Therapy

I’m 49 years old.I was diagnosed with schizophrenia about 10 years ago. I’ve been hospitalized for it on 3 occasions over the years. I find playing piano and my guitar and recording little songs has given me an outlet for my creative side and allowed me to put my manic side to a positive, more purposeful use.

I’ve got a little song I wrote and would like to share it, but I don’t know how to post it on this message board. It’s in an mp3 format on my computer.

Any suggestions?

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put it on youtube make a youtube channel and then post the link. or soundcloud account.

i have done the same starting just this year with the guitar and piano learning, it has also given me a creative outlet for both my manic times and depressive times

Hi, welcome to the forum.

Are a few budding musician here, Myself just started to learn the guitar a few days ago but love music in general and keeps me going.

You can not download directly from your device onto the board unless it’s a image. Even then it is limited for a few days to limit spam from new accounts. You can post links so you will have to download elsewhere and post the link to it. Unsure if that is limited for new accounts but it wont take long until you can do that. Just keep signing in and reading posts etc and will happen in a few days.

I’m also looking forward to hearing your work.

Thanks. I don’t feel comfortable posting any of my shtuff on youtube or soundcloud. Hmmm…if you’re keen to hear my latest effort, I could just email it to you if you would be comfortable with that.

It’s a little ditty I have recorded to pitch for a potential 30 second TV commercial for a phone company. I realize this is a longshot, but that’s my dream anyways.

In 2006 I thought I was part of a worldwide show…that everyone was laughing at me…like 6 billion people. I thought cameras were following my every move from the sky. Exasperated, I finally drove my car to another Province and pulled into an abandoned outdoor movie theater. I threw a big rock at one of the large screens. I wanted the world to know that I didn’t want to be in this movie. I just wanted my old life back with my little job, wife and young daughters. Then I gave both fingers to the world and took off my white t shirt and waved it in surrender to the sky. That was my way of trying to end the show. I had 2 relapses after that. But I’ve been on a pretty good run the last year or so.

I told my Doctor that I felt I was suffering from a version of Truman Show Syndrome (which I had read up on), but he dismissed that notion outright. I read that a guy in New York with the same symptoms as me felt he had to climb the Statue of Liberty. I totally understood that. He was trying to get to the highest point he could…to scold the sky cameras. And the statue in his mind, I bet, symbolized him just wanting his liberty/freedom back again.That was HIS way of trying to stop the movie he felt he was in.

I made up a quote about Art to myself years ago…

Bad Art can make you laugh.
Good Art can make you think.
Great Art can destroy you.

Perhaps, the schizophrenic mind just sees great Art in more things than your average person.

When I was hospitalized at age 47 two years ago, I got chummy with a few of the 20 somethings on the floor. After a few days this one girl said to me, “Pat. You don’t belong in a Mental Hospital. You belong in…Genius Camp” lol!

I told the young gal that it wasn’t true. I just had 25 years more of life experience than her. Age and wisdom…etc. We played duets on the piano together in the common room. I wrote on paper one of my songs for her on my last day there. Sadly, I don’t recall her name.

I believe that music can be good for our moods, I listen a lot of music created by various artists. I would like to play some instrument too, but I can not.

Some of that Truman Show Syndrome symptoms can be delusions and some real. I remember the time in the past when I had just returned from my trip in Venezuela to my home in Georgia and I said to my former US spouse that I wanted to travel to Guatemala and just within one minute or two a woman called at my number and commented on the phone that her husband had died in Guatemala. After many similar experiences I started thinking that all my life was followed and listened and watched as it was in the Truman Show and after a while I started talking alone in the house to these invisible listeners telling them about my thoughts and opinions aloud in a room where there was nobody else. Some of these people who seemed to follow me then in the 1990s have been elevated to high ranks in some military services today. Poor me.

Hey Gang! I just woke up this morning with an idea. I can’t do this right now as I’m very busy with work/family and we’re moving. But what I’d like to do down the road for some of you Poets and closet Wordsmiths who aren’t able to play an instrument, is put your words to music on my guitar or piano. I’ve got a pretty decent voice and a computer recording device. Then I’d just email the song back to you in an mp3 format. Cool? The song would be yours and only yours to keep forever.

I believe schizophrenic people are actually kinda ‘special’…all of the colours are there (and then some)…but their Rainbow for some reason has been bent out of shape.

If your poem or song lyrics are too long, I might just try to grasp the overall flavour of where you’re going with your heart, and produce a more condensed version of your penmanship.

I think this would be a fun project for both of us…putting your words and thoughts to music…and a good, positive, constructibve outlet for my own schizophrenia.

:slight_smile: