It’s amazing how many love songs focus on a person who feels unrequited, disoriented, despairing or angry as a result of external circumstances. The circumstances can vary, but their negative consequences for love have brought us musical offerings that lament the end of summer, a new boy or girl in town, the passage of time, lost innocence, the withdrawal of someone else’s affection, the craziness of other people, parental or community disapproval, a violent crime, personal betrayal, illness, a car crash, change in seasons and so, so much more.
Adam Gopnik notes that this pattern–that love promises delight and brightness but is most frequently written about in connection with its absence and associated dark times–has been with us for centuries. And one of Berthold Brecht’s more notable Q&A’s points is at least consistent with that view:
In the dark times
Will there also be singing?
Yes, there will also be singing.
About the dark times.
But if Gopnik is right about love songs, and Brecht is right about the singing, to what can we attribute the absence if songs about the losses people are experiencing day by day–and every day–from Alzheimer’s and dementia? And why, in some sense, are we not surprised about this?
The specter of an ever increasing number people who suffer from these afflictions is certainly a dark time–for them and for those who love and care for them. And before people actually pass away from their effects, these diseases also generate enormous personal losses, including disruptions of loving relationships and, in some cases, even the capacity to love.
For other kinds of dark times, music plays a role in how we help each other to grieve, appreciate what we’ve lost, and, collectively, find a path forward from personal isolation and despair. It works that way with funerals and memorial services for both common folks and celebrities. Music provides something similar for age cohorts in memorializing lost youth at a particular time in history. Frequently, the times lost are themselves defined by musical history.
Music has also been cited as extraordinary integrative resource for people who have suffered trauma from various kind of catastrophes, including natural disasters, enslavement and wars. Doug Bradly noted something along those lines about music of the Vietnam era, “While many of my brothers suffer mentally from our tours in Vietnam. the music helped us keep some sanity in a place and time that stripped our dignity and our caring for others away.”
It seems to us that we could all use some music to accompany the dark times so many people are going through in dealing with Alzheimer’s and other forms of dementia. But we’ve been looking for that without much success. There’s little written beyond the Simon and Garfunkle track “Old Folks” that specifically references “losing” people to what appears to be Alzheimer’s and dementia. But we haven’t given up hope! And we’re inviting visitors to this website to help us fill in this significant blank. If you have a suggestion and can send us a link, we’ll gladly add it to this area of the Resources section.
HOWEVER . . . We recently realized that a slight shift in emphasis, or alternate word here or there, can turn some regular love songs into plausible candidates for the Alzheimer’s and Dementia playlist we’re seeking. In some songs, for example, switching out “eros” for the Greek notion of “agape” will take us all the way home. With others, we need to swap our image of the antagonist, or external circumstance, that’s standing in the way of love, for the phrase “Alzheimer’s or dementia.” Of course, some love songs are just too hot and sexy to survive this kind of make-over–and why bother when we like them just the way they are! But the lyrics of many others–and of many loving relationships–are ambiguous or caring enough to invite less steamy interpretations.
We’ve listed below a few likely candidates for this kind of shape-shifting, but listening to almost any popular love song with Alzheimer’s and dementia in mind has been something of a revelation. Even songs where vivid details in one stanza or another point towards erotic, romantic love have taken on a somewhat different meaning–as if at times the erotic detail was actually diminishing a more universal message of love and loss, engagement and disruption, connection and disconnection.
Maybe that’s what’s most amazing–not that we lack songs about the love and loss that people suffer through Alzheimer’s or dementia, but that we lack the imagination and presence of mind to hear, within the songs of love and loss we’re already familiar with, the restorative, clarifying and healing potential for other forms of suffering, caring and fulfillment.
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Candidates for an A&D Playlist
The Flaming Lips: “The Castle“
Roy Orbison: “In Dreams“
David Bowie: “Dollar Days“
Death Cab for Cutie: “Codes and Keys“
Laura Marling, “Soothing”
Eva Cassidy: “Time is a Healer“
Labi Siffre, “Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying”
Nick Drake, “Place to Be”