"He Gave Me These Sounds"

:)

Happy? I wracked my brain for a subject to write about- something entirely happy... something purely innocent and devoid of the cruelties of the world... What did I come up with? Otters, pandas, and babies being calmed by pieces of musical genuis. If that's all you need to get through your day here are the links

Bob Marley bewitches with Buffalo Soldier and PSY pacifies with Gangnam Style

    

My job is done!

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Dissatisfied? Okay, okay, no need to get testy. Let's continue with this idea of the power of music, but let's add the complexity of age. Get ready to grind that nit and grit between your teeth, but look forward to the polished smile of being uplifted.

The great majority of us have had an elderly person in our lives that we cared about greatly and deeply. Many of us have experienced heart-wrenching loss when they passed, and just as many of us have faced that lingering flash of regret-- that helplessness when you pray to a higher being to let you take back all those times you were "too busy" to visit. Some of us have also gone through the devastating experience of watching our loved ones battle with dementia-- degenerative memory loss caused by a slew of terrible diseases. These things, these heartbreaking things are the inevitabilities of life. Though we may march to the beat of different drums, the parade of mortality always leads to an end.

Enough nit and grit? Good, now that we've tossed a handful of peanuts to the elephant in my blogger room let's commence to the uplifting. The following is a video of Henry who lives in an assisted living home. Like many residents he spends his day sitting silently-- a stranger to his past self-- "unresponsive and almost unalive." But there's magic in this cruel world...

"I figure right now the world needs to come into music"

Henry's liveliness both during and after the music is alive and tremendous. The change in demeanor, like a portal into the past, is evidence of music as the "quickening art." How does this happen? How can the intense pleasure we get from various types of intoxicating music become everlasting? When we enter a trance or out-of-body or even an excessively aware sensation does the trigger get smushed into our brain? Or is this footprint a unique, congenital feature of our brains waiting to be filled in by some musical puzzle piece?

Maybe magic can be found in other things-- smells, colors, taste, weather. Little everyday happinesses might turn out to be our Cab Calloway in our old age. (Cue uplifting) We all have these worries that we feel will never go away; we take the small things and escalate them to be "the end of me!" Yet the worries in the world are matched by the amount of wonderful, and even so, there are few things that tingle and impress our hearts. These few things are the tidbits that God or Life gives us. Maybe that means that as the years go by our worries will float to the back-burner brain cells-- the first to go kaput from neglect. Age will be good to us and leave only memories of the "beautiful lovely."

Let's cross our fingers that this is true, and that someday, when age has worn down and sagged the once taut and vibrant drumhead, we can still sing loud to its beat. Let's make room for the truly memorable: the smell of your grandparents' garden, the color of your lover's eyes, the taste of mom's fried eggplant, the chill of the indian summers you spent biking around the "world." Let's screw the small stuff because it's doomed to be outlasted by the good stuff anyway.

Go to an assisted living home. I challenge you to be the music in someone's life. Be the one to animate them, even for just a second-- even for just the length of a song.