Monday, June 19, 2017

The Power of Music

Annamaria on Monday

I am writing this in the hopes that it will spread the word about the power of music in one important sphere.

This is David and me in in South Africa in 2004, just as his sun was beginning to set.


He is now well into the fourteenth year of Alzheimer's disease that began when he was only 67.  He has been in residential care for just over three years now.  Visiting him is difficult in many ways.

One of the things that struck me early on, is how boring was the music in the otherwise lovely place where he lives.  His neurologist had told me ten years ago that music was the last thing to go.

 

Most of the videos and CDs the staff played for the residents was music that would have appealed to my grandmother: "Cruising Down the River," "She'll be Comin' Round the Mountain," "Goodnight Irene."  Really?  Is the best they can do?

One Sunday morning's observation: playing on the TV in the activities room was a video of a bunch well-groomed, preppy looking white people singing "On Moonlight Bay."  This song comes into the story of Idol of Mombasa, where my characters sing it.  Vera and Justin Tolliver loved it, because it was the latest thing.  IN 1912!!  Looking around at the people in the activities room, I saw two things.  Many of them were my age or a decade or so older, and they were not all white.  With that boring music playing in the background, many of them had fallen asleep.  Even the ones who were awake were fidgety.  Just as bored as I was with the selections.

The next song put me over the edge: "Nearer my God to Thee."  Were those words supposed to be comforting?  A warning?  It seemed cruel, under the circumstances.


What would happen if the residents heard the music that was the soundtrack of their lives.  Making such a suggestion to the management brought no positive response.  I took matters into my own hands.  The next week I went back with a disk burned on my home computer that I labelled "Happy Music."  Songs they would recognise.  Elvis.  Frank Sinatra.  Judy Collins.  Chuck Berry.  "Oh What a Beautiful Morning" from the original Broadway cast of "Oklahoma."


That morning the crowd in the activities room was just falling asleep after their 10:30 snack.  I asked permission of the activities coordinator to replace the Christian hymn video with my totally secular music.  When the changeover took place, the first song was Elvis singing "Can't Help Falling in Love with You."  Eyes opened.  Soon heads began to move to the music.  People were swaying in their wheelchairs.

Alan, who still had the erect carriage of the career soldier he had been, said, "I haven't heard this song in years.  I used to play this on the radio station on the base in Germany.  The Germans loved this  song."

When Judy Collins began to sing "Both Sides Now," Ann--who had always seemed cranky--smiled and sat up straight.  Half a minute into the song, she began to sing along in a clear, sweet voice.  She knew every word.  She smiled for the rest of the morning.

Everyone sang along or mouthed the words to "Oh What a Beautiful Morning."


Best of all, was what happened to Linda.  She is a very tiny woman, with shoulder length white hair.  I had never seen her do anything but sit immobile, half-reclined in her chair, with her head to one side and her eyes closed, seemingly nearly comatose.  Her walker sat before her, but I had never seen her move.  Now she was moving from side to side, and tapping her foot.  And then something that looked nothing less than miraculous.  Along came Bob Seger singing, "That Old Time Rock n' Roll."  She sat up, her whole body started to move.  She grasped her walker, rose have way out of her seat, and danced to the words, "That kinda music just soothes my soul..."

Bingo!

Fourteen home-made CD playlists later, 280 songs in total, and the music is still doing its magic.

A few weeks ago, David went into the hospital for treatment of an infection.  While there, he remained compliant, but I could tell he was uncomfortable.  I brought along my laptop and played one of his favorites,"Appalachian Spring," for him.  Though blind now and unable to speak, he looked toward the music.  His demeanour calmed.  His face took on an almost beatific expression.  Something wonderful to me.


I described the event to a friend who had asked about David.  She told me of a documentary called "Alive Inside," which I have since watched.  It recounts how other people have benefited from the palliative effect of listening to the right music.  The folks in the film have suffered great losses through dementia, Alzheimers, and other mental illnesses.  A volunteer at a nursing home found that playing the right music for them brought out their inner selves.  Featured in the film are doctors, social workers and the renowned Oliver Sacks.   The flick is available on Netflix, YouTube, and its own website.  Don't worry.  You can watch it.  It will not make you sad.  It is joyous, like my days watching people in David's care home come alive to the soundtracks deep in their memories.  Here's a clip from film.



If you need to get back in touch with someone still alive inside, but difficult to reach, I urge you to bring them the right music.  It will lift your spirits like nothing else.


26 comments:

  1. Beauty and wonder out of sadness and tragedy. So human.

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    1. What a blessing that we humans are capable of finding and connecting to such consolations. AND Music!!! The most universal of human arts. I can't live without it

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  2. What wonderful discovery you made! Has the care facility accepted it as the way to go forward?

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    1. I am going there this morning to try to press for a more organized approach to music therapy there. Cross your fingers.

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    2. I think they'd best cross their fingers that they don't cross you, sis. :)

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    3. You make me feel like a sore loser, Bro. Not me. If I fail with one kind of approach, I just try another. I had a very productive chat with a manager there. She is going to get family members involved. I--possessor of an enormous library of music--am standing by to provide the right stuff. I talked to one of the residents. She asked for Tchaikovsky! I had an aria on my iPad which I played for her. Next week I'm going to bring her bunch of Pyotr Ilyich! I'm loving doing this.

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    4. You, a sore loser? Never. One first must lose and that isn't in your vocabulary. You're all about seeing that the right thing is done for all the right reasons. I just wish someone like you had been around when my mother went through the AZ process. God bless you, sis.

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  3. The care home my dad was in asked for a play list of his favourite music at the primary interview. So they had to put up with him doing the Rat a Tat A Tats on chanson d amour ( or however it's spelled!) and singing rude words to 'Big Bad John'. A few months later, the staff reported that he had some kind of incident - a display of displeasure that was not like him. I explained that he had severe allergy to Andrew LLoyd Webber and as he was wheelchair bound, he couldn't get away - this was duly noted.
    The ladies in the quiet lounge watched Singing In The Rain at least four times a week. Those that couldn't speak, would sing as they knew the words so well, and they would try to dance along.. hands to the left, feet to the right. The visitors all joined in. It was a very happy place!

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    1. How lovely, Caro. I wish I could have heard him sing big Bad John. I would love to have had him teach me the rude words! And I share his aversion to Lloyd Webber IN SPADES! I like him even better now.

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  4. So perceptive and true, I got teary Both my parents had dementia in later life and I saw this with both of them. When my father could no longer speak very much or recognize people, if we took him to religious service, he could sing right along with the chants. My mother, in her last year and mostly speaking, perked right up when a band played the Air Force song, and tapped her hand along with the music. (My dad was in the Army Air corps when they got married in 1943)

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    1. Thank you, Triss, for weighing in with your evidence. The right music really does do wonders.

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  5. Some days I feel a great deal like Opus. Read the Bloom County comic from yesterday (Sunday, June 19). I'll bet you'll agree (I won't tell you any more, as I don't want to spoil the 'story'):

    https://www.facebook.com/berkeleybreathed

    The return of Bloom County this past year has been SUCH a blessing in these trying times! :-)

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    1. Yikes, EvKa. Your link did not take me to where you want me to go. Can you send another way to it.

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    2. Umm... I'm not sure why it wouldn't work. Berkeley Breathed is the creator of Bloom County, and that link is to his Facebook page where he posts the cartoons. There some 'weird' pictures near the top where he's making fun of the Trumps (and his own characters), but if you scroll down just a short ways, you'll come to a "Sunday comic" (full-color, multiple panels) of Opus being wheeled into the Emergency Room. No?

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  6. Annamaria, that was a brilliant idea! Popular music will be more varied, lively, and meaningful to almost all of us.

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  7. And here's another link for you, a picture I took of Cara at Powell's in Portland last week:
    http://www.kaser.com/CaraBlackPowellsPortland14June2017.jpg

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  8. Thank you, Jono. It didn't feel brilliant to me at all, just like the obvious next step. It worked!!!

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  9. You did a wonderful thing in bringing lively music to the people in that facility. Of course, music is the food of life, a universal panacea.

    I hope that the staff heeds your example and plays the music you brought and continues to do this.

    I can be exhausted as I was tonight and watched a TV show where "Ain't No Mountain High Enough," a hit made popular years ago by Marvin Gaye and Tammy Terrell. I started clapping, stood up and started dancing. Gave the performers a standing ovation along with the audience.

    It is so important. I saw a documentary on PBS about some people who utilized music with people with dementia and were trying to popularize this and get the idea into all such facilities.

    Maybe you will help move that prospect along.

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    1. Thank you, Kathy. Moving the idea along is exactly what I want to do. Having seen joy on those otherwise mask like faces, I want to do whatever I can to spread the word.

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  10. Bravo or should I say Brava! to you. Hope you succeed. It's important.

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  11. As a p.s., my mother was a classical pianist, trained as a child although she never did it professionally as an adult.
    She played the piano though at her home.

    She developed dementia and had to go to assisted living and lived there for 6 1/2 years, a nice place near Boston.

    Someone brought a piano and put it near her room. She played it. The staff was astonished.

    But then they moved it downstairs and it was near the dining room, and she never played it again.

    I tried to get the staff to move it back but they wouldn't. This was heartbreaking because my mother loved music.

    She would sight-read the music and we would sing periodically through an entire song book. And she listened to classical music all day at her home.

    But she lost this and it was maddening and sad at the same time.

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    1. Kathy, How sad and angering that the last thing to make a person happy should be denied. I am sure the staff was not being malicious. Sometimes, people at work make knee-jerk decisions for superficial reasons. I used to teach corporate executives decision making. I was frequently amazed at how incapable some very high-level people were when it came to thinking things through.

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  12. I mentioned your post to a healer friend of mine on Mykonos, and she immediately referred me to a documentary on the very subject of Alzheimers and music! Here is the link to "Alive Inside." https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4Zo_JQZo3Y0

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    1. My brother, that is the full version of the one in the clip in my post. I urge you to watch it. it is lovely. And you get hear the dear-departed, still brilliant Oliver Sacks on the subject. Have a box of tissues handy.

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    2. I think you mean two boxes. :(

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