A Story That's True

The former Mt. Zion Baptist Church has been site of the Music Resource Center since 2003.Synchronicity is not just an album by The Police. It is a psycho-spiritual construct developed by the late Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung. Jung defined synchronicity as an “a-causal connecting principle,” where two events occur in chronological proximity to each other, so that the people involved deem it a meaningful coincidence. Jung believed that synchronicity occurs in relation to the collective unconscious, a universal information system that connects us all across time and space. Synchronistic events occur quite often, and enlighten us to the notion that everything, everywhere, is connected at a very deep level. Popular examples of this phenomenon include: receiving a phone call from the very person you were just thinking of; or running into an acquaintance who turns out to have information that you were recently seeking. Jung's most famous description of this sensation involves a patient who was not progressing in her treatment until a rare beetle appeared while she was retelling a dream about that exact type of insect. This profound development became a catalyst for her future growth.

To me, when there are many synchronistic happenings around a certain circumstance, it means that something is meant to be. Some people call it “flow.” And that's exactly what transpired to bring the members of the Dave Matthews Band together. Dave just happened to be working at Miller's Bar in Charlottesville, Virginia, where LeRoi Moore and Carter Beauford played the saxophone, and drums, respectively. Dave reports that he brought a tape of some of his musings to LeRoi and Carter and he “was lucky cuz they had the afternoon free.” And that was the beginning. Now, nearly 20 years later the Dave Matthews Band is still going strong, playing in front of packed venues all over the world. Of course, for any relationship to survive that long evolution has to occur. People either grow together on a parallel path or they split apart. According to Dave, there was a time when the future looked bleak for the group until open communication between the members reunited their bond. However, shortly after this process began, LeRoi's tragic death occurred, leaving the band with a gaping new wound to heal.

On April 10th, a year and eight months after LeRoi's untimely death, Charlottesville's own Music Resource Center dedicated it's performance hall to the life and memory of LeRoi with the proceeds from DMB's latest C-Ville performance. Sadly, on that same night, LeRoi's 80 year old mother, Roxie Holloway Moore died. It's not that one event caused the other. If we look for cause and effect we miss the point. It's that these two significant incidents occurred in such a short time span, that we can't help but consider the idea that there is an unseen network joining all of our experiences together. Clearly, synchronicity does not always involve happy circumstances like the ones that brought the band together. It is not good or bad or right or wrong. It just is. In Dave's poignant words:

                                         One day we might see,

                                         Doing not a thing,

                                         Breathing just to breathe,

                                         We might find some kind of reason.

Hayley Bauman, Psy.D.

Author of Serendipity and the Search for True Self