What is a UNIFIED SONIC ENVIRONMENT (U.S.E.)?
As Ketamine therapy continues to grow in popularity in the wake of a psychedelic renaissance, discovering the
connection between music, emotion, and an individual’s psyche (under the guidance of a skilled therapist) is the
source of an ever-expanding exploration.
Music has proven to be a necessary tool in Ketamine therapy, with the majority of therapists choosing to utilize
playlists to aid in their patients’ sessions. The question arises, however, if playlists are indeed
the optimal vehicle for facilitating Ketamine journeys; due to the natural interruptions and
deviations from song to song, I believe the playlist structure is not an ideal framework to permit a free-flow of emotion
nor to create a cohesive experience from beginning to end. When we look more closely, it seems apparent that using
a playlist may actually be exacerbating a sense of discontinuity and disorientation–the already ephemeral nature of
the intrapsychic material being elicited becomes further fragmented as the mood, tonal, and rhythmic changes
(intentionally conjured by the artist creating each track) could in fact be seen in the light of working against the effort
to integrate the aspects of one’s psyche as a whole.
As an innovative alternative, imagine an environment where an individual can transcend
their current reality and move forward into an uninterrupted flow of deep
exploration; an open-ended sonic landscape that serves as a projection screen for one’s own organic cognitive,
emotional, and somatic mental inclinations rather than a specific direction of mood found in “standard” music tracks. I
aim to offer a singular experience which would allow you, the therapist, to better guide your patient through core
emotional material without the concern of a particular song duration. Tonal continuity provides a through line between
overlapping emotional states, increasing the potential of your patient’s progress exponentially, while the reemergence
and repetition of certain themes assist the patient in anchoring their journey and being immersed in a developmental
process.
In my 20+ years of composing and producing music professionally, my predilection has always been to write toward a
visceral reaction, navigating the dialectics of the human experience and teetering between themes of chaos
and cohesion, ecstasy and despair, expansiveness and restriction… but
ultimately, and most importantly an emphasis on surrender to all that presents
itself. In essence, these are not ‘songs’ as one would generally conceptualize musical compositions, but rather
sonic landscapes ripe with the potential for the unconscious to become manifest and be witnessed.
It is my belief that the power of this medicine along with the concept of a Unified
Sonic Environment (U.S.E) as an alternative specifically to aid in Ketamine
therapy will facilitate a transformative experience with a much greater potential
for progress within a single session than the current playlist paradigm provides.
My hope is to encourage this treatment with a musical contribution as earnestly as I can to the best of my abilities; to
constantly evolve, writing compositions with the spectrum of the human experience in mind. We are at the very
beginning of a powerful movement in the field of psychology, and I am grateful to be at the ground floor with you.
RICHARD PENZONE IS A COMPOSER, PRODUCER,
AND VISUAL ARTIST FROM LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK.
AND VISUAL ARTIST FROM LONG ISLAND, NEW YORK.