A man sits alone in a room. He is slouched over in his wheelchair, a chair he has not left in well over three years. He seems to be dead, yet is still breathing. He is a shell of the man that once stood tall and proud. He is a dementia patient in a hospital. A jazz album quietly begins to crackle on a turntable in the corner. Slowly, the man comes to life. His eyes light up, and he begins to hum along. He is back, even if only for the short time that the album plays. The music has brought him to life.
The scene described above is not staged. It is real. Music has a healing capacity that nothing else has every been able to touch. If you have ever taken the time to truly listen to a song, even if you just hear the music as white noise, it effects you. Music, when it enters your brain, connects many different passages ways between the left and right hemispheres, passage ways that are untouched by any other form of noise. This is why it is being used in dementia patients. It connects the brain, helps functionality.
The man in the passage came to life because of the music. Before the album, he was incoherent and could not hold a conversation about anything. After the album began, he slowly came to life. He was able to remember things that had been "lost" years ago. He could tell you the names of his children, the feeling he felt when he held his first child, the score of the baseball game that he had taken his son to over twenty years ago. He remembered because of the music. After the music died away, he was able to carry on a conversation for a short while, but soon he went back to his sedated state, unresponsive and dead.
The brain is an amazing thing. It can recall and dismiss information as it pleases, and does so of its own accord. It is complex in its simplicity. No doctor has yet to understand 100% of the human brain. Parts still remain a mystery, particularly those parts where music is concerned. Music is one of the few things on earth that uses the entire brain. Without music, no one would ever use both hemispheres of their brain simultaneously.
There is a connection made with music, a connection that cannot be broken. I have a friend who spent two months in a coma after a skateboarding accident. He hit his head on the pavement and lost a lot of his brain's functionality for a while. He had to relearn how to talk, walk, read, eat, etc. He was an invalid, and yet he still remember music. I went to see him and took some music that I knew he liked with me. Even though he could say anything, I knew that he recognized the rhythms and patterns. I could see it in his eyes and his posture. Music helped him throughout his healing process, allowing him to relearn at a faster pace than other patients had. Even though he could not remember his own name, he remembered the music. That is how powerful it is!
I couldn't make this up if I tried. Music is incredible! We interact with it on a different, more intimate level than anything else on earth. That is why I love it so much. I feel it in everything I do. I hear it in the steps on the pavement, I see it in the blowing leaves, I feel it in the breeze. It is everywhere. Music is the earth, it is every breath you take, it is the life all around you. You just have to listen for it.
