by Emma Kieran

(Trigger warning: mention of su*cide)

At some point in high school, my violin teacher (the incredible Emily Bowman) mentioned the possibility of me going to Switzerland over the summer to live with her sister and brother in law and intern at their music organization, Pillow Song. It sounded like an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. Emily’s sister, Sarah, and Sarah’s husband Rene, founded Pillow Song in 2013, in a loft space in the town of Stans, Switzerland, nestled in a lake-side valley at the edge of the Alps. The two of them have been touring musicians separately (The Bowmans, Coal), and have a duo together called Famous October. Time passed, and Pillow Song grew and eventually moved out of the loft space and into a new location in Stans, the culture house in town known as the Chäslager. My high school summers became devoted to things I needed to do close to home and by the time college came around, it didn’t seem like this Switzerland dream would ever end up working out.    Fast forward to the summer of 2022. I was spending my last college summer in Grinnell as a research assistant and working on my application for the Watson Fellowship. As a requirement for the application, you must extensively plan your Watson year — everything from the countries you plan to go to, contacts you’ll make in the application process so if you end up receiving the fellowship they can serve as helpful connections when you’re traveling, and some idea of what you’ll be doing in each place. As I began to imagine my dream year on a Watson, the thought struck me…what if I incorporated Switzerland into my Watson year and could volunteer at Pillow Song?! At this point, I reached out to Sarah after many years of being out of touch, to say there was a very small chance of me getting this fellowship but if I did, could I connect with Pillow Song while there. She was eager and open to the possibility. I didn’t want to get my hopes up though because we’d have to wait until March to know if I’d been selected for the fellowship.   Receiving the Watson, finally making it to Switzerland, and getting to volunteer for a month at Pillow Song are all dreams I at one point never thought could happen. Getting to see how each of these dreams have woven themselves together has been a beautiful reminder that things take time, and if we stay open and patient, things can unfold even better than we imagined.   Going into my internship at Pillow Song this past month, I knew two main things: 1. Pillow Song is an organization that focuses on positive social change through music 2. They host weekly concerts and free participatory music jams and singalongs. I would soon learn what exactly this “social change through music” looks like in practice, and I’d experience how it feels to be both an audience member and performer on the Pillow Song stage.   “Positive social change through music”…from the first time I saw this written on Pillow Song’s website years ago, I loved this mission statement. It’s the perfect phrase to capture what Pillow Song is all about. But I didn’t really know what this actually looked like. What is being changed? And how is this happening through music? Getting to have an immersive Pillow Song experience for four weeks helped me to reach a better understanding of this, and it was truly remarkable to see the intentionality behind putting these words into action.   Early on during my time in Switzerland, Sarah shared with me something that had puzzled her for many years. The suic*de rate within Switzerland has been one of the highest in Europe in recent decades. Although the rate has been declining since the 1980s (https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/36592392/), she wondered how a country with extreme privilege and access to such beautiful nature was still experiencing a mental health crisis. After her parents passed within a few years of each other and her grieving prompted her to research the psychology of trauma and grief, Sarah began to find more clarity for these difficult questions. Her research helped her to learn about how when people can’t process their grief, self-doubt, or other heavy emotions, it can become too overwhelming to bear. She also learned more about how music can serve as a “safe container” of sorts to process these challenging emotions. While she knew she couldn’t take away other people’s grief or pain, she became more determined to use Pillow Song as a space where people could process it. As Sarah explained to me, music gets to the core of the human experience so well, and as a result it’s such an accessible way for people to feel what they need to feel. She talked about the importance of creating more dialogue around topics such as mental health, grief, and how to support people experiencing those, and the role that music can have in opening a pathway for that to happen.   Starting in 2021, Sarah organized the first Musical Companion Festival with the help of others in the Pillow Song community. Over a few days, this festival created a musical journey that led people through themes such as isolation, loneliness, healing, and joy — especially relevant topics coming out of the pandemic. Every year since, there has a been a Musical Companion Festival to help people explore through musical offerings the yearly theme. In May 2024, the festival theme will be “Earth,” and I got to see the early stages of this planning process which was really exciting. It’s going to be an amazing celebration of environmental stewardship through music that resonates so much with what I’m exploring this year.   Helping people process their emotions through music is a big piece of the Pillow Song puzzle, but I learned that there’s more to it than that. In conversations with both Rene and Sarah, I began to understand something I hadn’t previously considered when thinking about the role that music can have in addressing the climate crisis. Talking with the two of them, I became more aware of just how much the climate crisis is rooted in capitalism and over-consumption. How often do so many of us turn to relying on material things to bring us happiness? Christmas feels like a prime example of capitalist-driven over-consumption that is absolutely horrendous for the planet. Just think of the waste that’s created every year from excessive store-bought gifts packaged in plastic within single-use wrapping paper. (Important to note here…I love the holiday spirit of giving, but there are so many alternatives to experiencing that without contributing to capitalism and landfills). How can we stop literally buying into the capitalist myth that more things will make us happier? I am so thankful for my conversations with Sarah and Rene, because I became aware of just how powerful music can be in dismantling such consumer-based mindsets. When people experience an evening of music at Pillow Song, they often leave feeling more fulfilled and happier than any material items could make them feel. Experiencing music like this over time could eventually lead people to rely less on buying things in order to find happiness and instead cultivate it in ways that don’t contribute to a capitalist system.    While there are so many dismal statistics related to the climate crisis and environmental injustice, I’m left with a revived sense of hope that intentional music experiences like Pillow Song concerts can make an important impact when it comes to changing the way people think. Although technology is incredibly important in navigating us out of the catastrophic future humanity is headed towards, conversations with Rene and Sarah and other people in Switzerland reminded me that technology will not relieve us of our reliance on capitalism — a main driver in climate change. As much as we may not want to, we must change our lifestyles. This reminds me of what I’ve learned from Kamyar Enshayan, the director of the Center for Energy and Environmental Education at the University of Northern Iowa, who believes that in order to address climate change we need a paradigm shift which will influence us to reduce our consumption habits. Throughout the rest of my Watson journey and beyond, I’m eager to further explore the possibilities of music to help with this.   While in Switzerland, I came to understand the multi-dimensional approach that Pillow Song has to living out its “positive social change through music” mission. But I don’t think I can convey just how powerful of an approach this is without attempting to capture a glimpse of what it feels like to experience a Pillow Song event.   I had the privilege of attending numerous concerts at Pillow Song, and while each was impactful in its own way, none left my heart wide open quite as much as the Leonard Cohen “Portraits” concert. Occurring every few months and hosted by Sarah, “Portraits” are tribute concerts for renowned musicians that have been suggested by members of the Pillow Song community. Multiple musical guests bring the essence of the Portrait artist to life through their songs. If you’re like me, you’ve left tribute concerts in the past feeling like instead of getting closer to the commemorated artist you just spent an entire concert listening to covers that made you feel more distant from them. If every tribute was like the Portraits evening I attended at Pillow Song, I’d be at every possible one.   The concert opened with Sarah playing a hauntingly moving rendition of “You Want It Darker,” Cohen’s last song he wrote before he died. She cast a spell over the audience and set the tone for the rest of the evening. Then, she read about a 15 minute monologue that she wrote, capturing pieces of Cohen’s life. This is one of those experiences I simply have no words for. With a musical backdrop of Misha Kalinin’s guitar and Roksana Smirnova’s piano playing, Sarah’s words became a dance filled with emotion and wonder and beauty like nothing I’ve ever heard before. This word dance pulled open my heart, and it felt so freeing. She talked about Cohen’s profound ability to help people feel less alone through his music, and how he thought of songwriting as being married to the mystery and the people who heard his music were each the mystery, finding themselves in his songs. Sarah’s monologue will most likely eventually be available to read or listen to online, and once it is, I will share with you. It was such a gift to be there and witness it in person, but I know the words will still carry such power no matter how they’re heard.   After Sarah’s monologue, for the rest of the evening I heard the Cohen songs not just with my ears, but with my heart. I imagine many others in the audience felt similarly. Other musicians throughout the night brought their own sincerity to Cohen’s words and music. I was so honored to get to sing Hallelujah, with Sarah and Rene on harmonies and Misha and Roksana on guitar and piano. I left this Portraits concert feeling cleansed and uplifted and reflective all at the same time. I know this is the case for all Pillow Song events in that each one has its own unique, impactful way of helping people feel deeply. In a world that doesn’t always give us time or space to do that, it’s really special to see how Pillow Song does this with such thoughtfulness and care.   Though my time in Switzerland has come and gone too quickly, I know I’ll be taking with me these experiences and new perspectives that will continue to impact me for a long time. Above all, getting to see Pillow Song both behind the scenes and front and center has taught me what an impact music can have when it starts on a heart level — a living testament to a quote Sarah frequently refers to from the Archbishop Desmond Tutu, “Do your little bit of good where you are; it’s those little bits of good put together that overwhelm the world.”