Since I wrote the blog about the Big Mo Pod Show, Hickory Smoked Blues, I’ve been trying to remember how I connected the dots between Kintsugi and blues music, which is said to be healing even though often it sounds like it could make you hurt.
I had a devil of a time tracking this down. The image of Kintsugi or Kintsukuroi, which is the Japanese art of repairing broken pottery by mending the broken parts a mixture which contains powered gold.
The main idea is that repairing something broken using something like gold (read blues music here) can be healing.
You could also apply this to some other process, including psychotherapy.
The writing of a couple of people helped me make the connection. One of them is now a child psychiatrist named Jenna, who used to write the blog The Good Enough Psychiatrist, a link for which is still on my blog menu. Her post entitled “Amae” (a Japanese concept meaning cherished) caught my attention. Amae has both positive and negative aspects. In a way blues music is similar. It can be nourishing as long as it isn’t too focused on trauma.
About a month later, I found an essay by another child psychiatrist, Dr. Ashmita Banerjee, MD, entitled “The Power of Reflection and Self-Awareness,” actually mentions kintsukuroi at the end of the essay following her poem, called “Not A Poem.”
So, I think what I was getting at was pain and suffering can be reduced in healing ways, which can include art forms, like music. Some blues music can be repetitious, negative and even demoralizing when the emphasis is only on the pain. The other side of the blues can be uplifting, especially when there is the element of cherishing the tender, the wise, and the healing notes—the golden glue.
Both essays were the inspiration for my post, “Food for Thought.” The image of the kintsugi bowl is on both that post and “Big Mo Pod Show: Hickory Smoked Blues.” I still think the Robert Cray Band version of “I’ll Always Remember You” is a reminder of Kintsugi, at least for me.
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