The Benefits Of Singing

Every doctor has known the frustration of trying to help a patient who just won’t even try to comply with treatment.

Everyone who is in the military, works for the government or a corporation/company of just about any size knows the frustration of dealing with an unresponsive or non-functional bureaucracy.

In my line of work, I deal with both — traveling around and answering cries for help and then finding obstructions, denial and wishful thinking making the solutions impossible.

You may find this hard to believe, but sometimes I get angry and frustrated at work, so I know that anybody can get angry and frustrated with their work.

My chief projects over this past year seem to be consulting for public agencies that are thorny bureaucracies.  The danger for someone like me, who is happiest when she has figured out how to get patients to do really well, is feeling frustrated when the system cannot or will not get them what they need.

I know when this gets to me and I can unhook from the system by accessing happiness that has nothing to do with work.

Even before my current explosion of dance practice, I figured out how to do this by singing.

It just feels good, overwhelmingly good, when I close my office door and sing a bit.  I don’t want to multiply my frustration, so I take my time to find the right key and stay in key.  I usually choose something I learned quite a while ago and have performed successfully at some point, so that I have positive associations with it for sure.

I will admit I like to slip in something in a foreign language, to confound anyone who actually hears me when my door is closed.

I love “Moulin des Amours,” known in English as “Where Is Your Heart?”  — the theme from the 1951 movie Moulin Rouge.  I sang it in a couple of cafes and at least one private reception while only a medical student. More recently, I spent a lot of time on it with a vocal coach, who helped me find a nice vibrato for my post-menopausal voice.

All performances were pleasant and well received.  I mean, I never “muffed” this song, or sang off key, or forgot the words, or did anything I regretted.

The setting, the days of Toulouse Lautrec at the Moulin Rouge (Paris) is my era.  A bunch of imagined memories flood into my brain when I sing this song.  I should have been “La Goulue,”  real name Louise Weber, who performed at the Moulin Rouge and was much painted by Lautrec.  Another nice Jewish girl, also a redhead.

Although it is not a song written during the era, it is pretty easy to tell why this one makes me smile, always.

There is a whole field known as music therapy.  Lots of people have done a lot of research on the benefits of music.

The neurological benefits are clear, the field of music therapy justified and, as far as I am concerned, worth every penny.

I only wish people had less “blooper-phobia” when it comes to participation as opposed to listening.  My own mother of blessed memory loved to sing, but could not carry the simplest tune (in a bucket).  This makes it all the more amazing that she married my father, who wrote and arranged lots of music, especially Jewish liturgical.  People from Jacques Offenbach to Al Jolson had that same curious dichotomy.  Cole Porter once said that the melodies he wrote were essentially Jewish melodies.

You look at this stuff closely enough, you find layers upon layers of interpretation.

I have been in a unique position to suggest improvements in quality of life in general from the judicious use of singing and music.

1.  When people who have a stroke are unable to speak as they wish, I have convinced them to try singing.  Music is in a different part of the brain that is sometimes preserved, depending on how “big” the stroke is.  I don’t fuss over the details of cerebral localization of function here.  Some make up the tune as they go along; some pick a tune they know and “speak” repeatedly to that tune.  Whatever. Communication ability is very precious.  Many people do not know how precious it is until they lose it.

2.  At one point, my husband and I wrote some parodies of well-known Frank Sinatra songs about quitting smoking.  I always have felt sad this program never saw the light of day for the general public.  The person in the recording studio who created the master had to stop smoking while he was doing it.  The association of this message with familiar tunes promised to be powerful.  I believe my husband’s rendition of “Girl with Emphysema” (sung to the tune of “Girl from Ipanema”) to be beyond price.

3.  Perhaps the most powerful trick schizophrenics have to stop them from hearing voices (when the medications are not effective as one would like) is to listen to wordless music. I have seen many who have a walkman and a smile on pretty much all day.  Better yet, if they sing, (more than eating or chewing gum) the bony conduction of the sounds they generate are often wildly effective at drowning out hallucinations.

Sometimes you do not need scientific research to prove something is good.

Just do it and you will know.