A VISION FOR OUR LIVES INSPIRED BY THE MOVEMENT FOR BLACK LIVES PLATFORM AND BLACK LIVES MATTER

"Getting to the emotional core of woundedness, of injustice, of wanting to right the wrong, can’t come about simply by talking about it… Music, if done skillfully, can reach those tragic, aching places."

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For the past two decades, I have been working as a conflict resolution specialist, helping to resolve conflicts all over the world. My training for this job focused on learning ways to promote dialogue between parties in conflict. I think about the dialogue process as bringing together “talking heads.” We’d sit for hours discussing the political issues that divided the parties. The problem with this approach is this:  conflict erupts when people have felt wronged, and the emotional reaction to these indignities is powerful. Words cannot touch the depth of the experiences people endure when they have been wronged. Getting to the emotional core of woundedness, of injustice, of wanting to right the wrong, can’t come about simply by talking about it.  We need other ways to appeal to our woundedness and to promote healing.

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"What Maurice is trying to do is revolutionary. He is using his multiple gifts as a musician to try to reach the profound injuries people have suffered from being treated as if they don’t matter."

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What Maurice is trying to do is revolutionary. He is using his multiple gifts as a musician to try to reach the profound injuries people have suffered from being treated as if they don’t matter. Music, if done skillfully, can reach those tragic, aching places. Music can not only get us to those places, but it can also deliver us from them toward a healing path. I’m not saying that music alone will solve all of our conflicts, but without finding a way to reach the depth of our concerns, the injuries to our common humanity, we will not find the kind of peace that we are all desperately yearning for. Congratulation, Maurice, for this noble effort.  You have what it takes to usher in a new way of appealing to the better angels of our nature.

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Donna Hicks, Ph.D.
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs
Harvard University