IF Sound is healing…
What’s the number one healing modality used around the world?
SOUND.
That’s what I learned years ago, from Angeles Arrien (http://www.angelesarrien.com/), in a lecture on medical anthropology. The question was, “what do humans do, when someone in the community is “ill”? The answer: we sing to them, pray over them, shake rattles up ad down their bodies, hover over them with singing bowls, reassure them with our words.
Conventional medical therapies (drugs or surgery) don’t even rank in the top four options.
That factoid has got me thinking a lot about our day to day lives and our general wellness, with respect to NOISE POLLUTION. If sounds matter so much to human beings in disease or distress, what happens when our sounds in our environments are out of our control?
Some of you know that I live in subsidized housing for seniors and for disabled people that sits smack dab next door to one of the most expensive “senior living experiences” in the area: The Gary Residence:
“The Gary Residence is a stately brick Victorian in one of Montpelier’s most gracious areas. Carefully renovated and tastefully decorated, it is only a short walk from the famous golden-domed Capitol, libraries, churches, restaurants and shops.”
13 suites. Single or double occupancy. $6000 per month. (https://thegaryresidence.com)
I pay a subsidized percentage of my monthly income: $527.
What is WRONG with this picture is the fact that my daily peace of mind AND the peace of mind of my 60 Pioneer Apartment neighbors, AND the peace of mind of the 20 or so Gary Residence community members is currently seriously affected by NOISE POLLUTION, as The Neighbors expand their facility:
https://www.tiktok.com/@tiktokgrannydoc/video/7133682795137862954?is_from_webapp=1&sender_device=pc&web_id=7132909202863081002
Yep. Just like the Joni Mitchell song, “they’re paving paradise to put in a parking lot.” Or, this this specific case a LOCKED “memory unit”. Translation: worried family members, that your Demented Elder Relative will wander away from our nursing home (whoops—”we dont’ use that language”)? Rest assured; we will keep them LOCKED UP.
The pros and cons of how AmeriKKKa copes with the rising number of demented seniors is a topic for another essay. Today, I want to stay focused on this “sound and healing”theme.
Clearly AmeriKKKan medicine has left “sound as healing “ out of any recipe for medical care. Hospitals are some of the most chaotic, and cacophonous places imaginable; and to believe that we should be content with those noisy environments while dancing through life-threatening healing crises is laughable. And, yet we willingly ignore that “background noise”.
Three particularly ridiculous examples from my own life spring to mind.
I remember accompanying a friend to her “breast ultrasound under fine needle location before biopsy” hospital adventure in a Boston area facility. Outside the window of the waiting room, I watched a version of The Gary Residence “remove the green/put in cement” experience. Construction workers/ tree specialists were noisily chopping down a stunningly beautiful weeping cherry tree. They fed the flowing branches directly into a wood chipper. In that case, they really WERE going to build a parking lot.
After the c-section birth of my second child, I chafed under the mandatory three days in the Newborn Intensive Care Unit for any baby birthed after prolonged rupture of the amniotic sac. My healthy 9 pound 8 ounce offspring lay exposed, flat on his back, arms and legs splayed, on a “bed’ under florescent lights, beeps and buzzes abounding all around through that three days of torture. The best that I could think to do was to place the tape recording of the music I had chosen to use through labor next to him in his cot.
That same offspring, many many years later as an adult lay in a neuro and orthopedic intensive care unit, recovering from a broken clavicle, two shattered ankles, and a broken back. Outside the window of his room, jackhammers attacked the concrete of a parking lot, paving the way for construction of another hospital building. They began every day at 7 a.m. They ended every day at 4 p.m. There was NO attention given to consequences to patient’s rest, recuperation and healing.
Hospitals and nursing homes are not generally very good places in which to heal.
So the construction work next door moves forward. The anticipated opening of this “dignity with aging” unit which “allows us to meet the unmet and critical (sic) need for memory care while allowing our residents to age in place” is not for another TWO FULL YEARS (September, 2023) (https://thegaryresidence.com/coming-in-2023-memory-care-wing/)!
As I write this, I have developed some strategies for staying well while the noise pollution in my life screeches on, often at ear-splitting levels. I put soothing music on at high volume to balance out (because I can’t actually DROWN out) the constant beeps and whistles from next door. I spend more time at the local library than in my apartment, when I really need focus for writing and thinking. I celebrate at 5 pm. each day with this horror show ends. I more deeply appreciate the quiet, of my weekends.
And I give daily thanks that I do NOT live in Manhattan (where it always sound like this) and that I don’t have the wealth and privilege to be “cared for” by family who would have me age in place in a locked ward.
Not much grace there, in my humble opinion.