All This and Music Too

Things seem to be pretty strange these days.

I’ve set a poem to music written by a young husband and father who is dying of ALS, Lou Gehrig’s Disease. He communicates with a computer and Stephen Hawkins’s voice. Before the onset of his illness he was more physical than I could ever hope to be (avid outdoors man, high school coach) and boasts an IQ of 135. I used to claim that if there ever was proof of the devil’s existence, it was cancer. Now I’m not so sure. Maybe it’s the fact that terminal diseases exist at all. But ALS is about the most frightening (I think of the last scene in the Dutch version of "The Vanishing").

While he can still communicate by manipulating a joy stick with his lower lip, he will soon lose that ability. At the moment, he can decide for himself when his feed tube should be removed, thus speeding up his death. Once he loses that ability, he will be at the mercy of his family's wishes. And through it all, that 135 IQ brain still ponders, considers, hopes nand dreams.

Meanwhile, I’m starting to work on “Black Hole Sun” by Soundgarden. I’ve never had a call to learn anything remotely contemporary. Yes, most hospice patients I serve tend to be older and enjoy the music of the 30s, 40s and 50s. Then again, my ALS patient is a relatively young man. His tastes are all over the place from Nine Inch Nails to fhe Beatles, CSNY, King Crimson and Emerson, Lake & Palmer.

Black Hole Sun is my first ‘grunge’ request. It isn’t however for a hospice patient. It’s for a convicted murderer who’ll probably not get paroled anytime soon from Attica. I made my first visit to Attica last Friday with a small group of Quakers who run a worship service. There are eight inmates in the group, all of them serving sentences for murder. I went out of curiosity but also because I immediately saw parallels. This population is as marginalized and forgotten as those who are terminally ill.

Yes, I was afraid at first but I realized as the group proceeded that these people are in fact people. They are souls, lost, angry and confused who crossed a line most of us can’t conceive of ever crossing. Many were drug addicts in search of the next score. Many were in their teens at the time of their crime. I don’t sympathize with them and I believe they should receive punishment for their crimes. And they are. They are in Attica. To me, the word Attica is almost as frightening as the concept of murder.

And just as I make myself available to souls in hospice who need the comfort of music as their disease consumes their lives, so too it makes sense to reach out to those who have screwed themselves and others to such a degree that parole becomes a daydream just as having enough money to take my kid to Paris someday is mine.

Along with Black Hole Sun, I’m also working on The Air Force Song, New York New York and Spanish Eyes. Not for the convicts. For the group of senior citizens living out their days at an assisted living center. They come to the group with smiles on their faces just as the inmates do, looking forward to hearing some familiar songs, songs of their youth, songs of their time in the armed forces.

They shake maracas and tambourines and sing along with me. They’re not terminally ill and they’re not murderers. But like each and every one of us, they’ve been sentenced to life. And what it brings me back to is the most fundamental principle of my personal concept of music therapy: it’s music that makes all this crap bearable.

Peace

Phillip Henry Marshall