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There is an epigraph by Martin Mull in Jimmy Webb’s book Tunesmith that reads, “Talking about music is like dancing about architecture”. Written on the page the lyrics are just words, divorced from the voice and melodies that give them life. While I have been able to weave my thesis around the lyrics of songs, I always envisioned a performance and a CD to accompany this work. A CD so that in ten years someone can still hear the songs if they want to, a performance so that the hermeneutic circle can be complete. As a performer, it is only in the presence of an audience, in returning the music to the world that inspires me, that a song is complete. And even then there is a chance that it will grow and change each time I perform it, each time someone comes forward and tells me about how they related to the song. Abram following Husserl recognizes “at least two regions of the experiential or phenomenal field: one of phenomena that unfold entirely for me– images that arise, as it were, on this side of my body–and another region of phenomena that are, evidently, responded to and experienced by other embodied subjects as well as by myself” (Abram, 1996, p. 38). The songs cannot just resonate with me, they must also resonate with those who have entered the conversation with me, but also any audience that I may encounter in the future. “This experienced solidity is precisely sustained by the continual encounter with others, with other embodied subjects, other centers of experience” (p.39). To simply write a thesis about the songs or using lyrics would deny what lies at the heart of the song as a work of art: a unique way of knowing within which perhaps lies a truth that could not be addressed in any other way (Gadamer in Jardine, P., 2000, p. 134).

“[A]nother of the lessons I’ve learned from the arts is that while they share commonalities, different forms of art put me in the world in different ways. They speak to different aspects of my nature and help me discover the variety of experiences I am capable of having. I believe that such lessons have implications for educational policy and for deciding about what knowledge is of most worth” (Eisner, 1991, p. 43).

Taken from Picard, S. (2003). Negotiating the distance: exploring the tension between the pedagogical relationship and the formal curriculum. Unpublished masters thesis. Univeristy of Calgary.

Abram, D. (1996). The spell of the sensuous: Perception and language in a more-than-human world. New York: Pantheon Books.

Eisner, E.W., (1991). What the arts taught me about education. In Willis, G. & Schubert, W. (Eds.) Reflections from the heart of educational inquiry: understanding curriculum and teaching through the arts. (pp. 34-48). New York: Suny Press.

Jardine, P.G. (2000). Understanding generative curriculum: a hermeneutic and ecological exploration. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Calgary.

Webb, J. (1998). Tunesmith: Inside the art of songwriting. New York: Hyperion.