The Gestalt Song Project

Be there now. Reconnect with another part of your life through music

It’s an understatement to suggest that music evokes memory. But what about the songs that fully transport you to another time and world that you once inhabited? Is there a particular song or melody that somehow defies chronological time and delivers you to a specific moment in your life as if you are really there once again; the place, the feelings, the sights, the smells, the relationships, the faces, the physical sensations, the atmosphere. You are there!

Directions: Simply recall a specific song or piece of music from the past and allow yourself to go where it brings you. Then, always using the first-person present tense, write down whatever you experience. It’s best to describe the experience as an anthropologist might; aspiring, if never quite reaching, objectivity: What are you perceiving? Focus on the senses, the atmosphere. What exactly are you experiencing in that moment?

The Gestalt Song Project is not: interested in the background information of the song itself; an interpretation of lyrics; musings on the songwriter or the musical artist. Rather, its focus is on expressing the embodied emotional and sensory experiences that the song conjures in the listener. 

Think of a song that takes you somewhere and be there now! If you are a client or potential client, please try this exercise and bring your writing to a session. If you are not, try the exercise and send submissions to: gestaltsongproject@gmail.com. Please list: your name and contact info. Use the name of song/music, the original artist, the primary place in which you remember having the experience, and year you had the experience as the title. Example: “Goodbye Pork Pie Hat, Charles Mingus, Toronto, 2001” or “Waterloo, ABBA, Nairobi, 1982.”
— Steve Ausbury