The Quickening Art

I ran across a video on Facebook recently, tucked in between political rants and cat videos, about an organization called Music & Memory. The video "Alive Inside" (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FWn4JB2YLU) features a gentleman called Henry, who has been living in a nursing home for over ten years because of seizures and subsequent dementia. Henry is non-communicative, nearly unresponsive, depressed...until he's given his iPod. The video shows Henry dancing in his chair and singing to his beloved music (Cab Calloway, he says) - an entirely different man. The effects don't stop there; the "quickening" effect that the music has on Henry's neurologic response lasts for nearly 30 minutes after his iPod is taken. He's conversational, his faded memories tied to his favorite music return to the front of his mind. The non-profit Music & Memory donates iPods to nursing homes for residents like Henry because of the therapeutic effect that personal music has.

I, of course, being the emotional rock that I am, was a weepy mess. I wanted to hug Henry, kiss the founders of the organization, and donate my salary to buy iPods for every nursing home resident in the country; partially because I was thrilled that the video wasn't one more group of people dancing to "Happy", but mostly because I see myself in Henry. Since I was a little girl, music has been a constant in the background of my life. I have a soundtrack. So many events, moments, and people in my life have their own track; they just lie buried in the back of my mind until I hear the first few notes of their song and, bam!, just like that, I'm right back in that moment, seeing, hearing, feeling all over again.

My mother and I woke up every morning to WKBO. When I hear "Bad Bad Leroy Brown" or "Disco Duck", I remember getting ready for school (and hating Rick Dees). She had a bright yellow Panasonic 8-track cassette player that I would sit with for hours listening to Elton John, Barry Manilow (my first concert, by the way), Janis Joplin. We would turn off the TV after Saturday morning cartoons and listen to the stereo while cleaning our house (before our weekly viewing of Creature Double Feature). I started piano lessons at age five, peppered in some viola (although very poorly), and listened to as much music as I could.

When I was nine, I, like every other female with a TV, fell in love with Rick Springfield via his role as Dr. Noah Drake on "General Hospital". At the same time, I traveled to Houston for my open heart surgery. My dad worked at an assisted living facility run by Carmelite nuns at the time. The sisters heard of my surgery and sent to me, at the hospital, a cassette tape of Rick's "Working Class Dog" and a sweet black and white ringer concert tee. I listened to that album over and over...and over. If I hear it now, I still know every word to every song. I can do this with any Wham! album, too. Suck it.

My tastes changed from Wham! to Bon Jovi to LL Cool J to U2 to The Cure to Nirvana to the Chili Peppers to Harry Connick Jr. to Metallica to the Foo Fighters and everything in between. I remember very specifically skipping school to drive to the PA Farm Show with a bunch of girls and singing "Brass in Pocket" at the top of our lungs. Crying my eyes out over a guy to "Nothing Compares 2 U" (which was so not true but, at the time, I thought I would just die). I ran down the beach at the Navy base on Coronado Island singing "One".
I got my infant son (and myself) through his nightly crying jags singing KC and the Sunshine Band and Parliament songs.
When I want to pump myself up for something I listen to "Where the Streets Have No Name".
I got to hear Elton John sing "Philadelphia Freedom" in Philadelphia.
I watched Frank Sinatra, Jack & water in hand, sing from a teleprompter and still bring down the house.
I married a musician who sings and plays bass.

Our living room houses a piano, a guitar, a cello, and a viola; soon to add a drum kit. My oldest son is a fantastic cellist who can play the piano by ear and writes his own music (string compositions and dubstep. Yes, dubstep). My youngest son is a sometimes-violist who loves to sing. He sings like me; this isn't good. The kid has a lot of heart and no stage fright, though, so more power to him. He'll be on SNL one day - you watch.

I have no musical talent - I just love to listen. I really hope my kids remember to bring me an iPod in the nursing home one day.