Frustrated, but I have a plan and maybe we can help others

[wolfgangster]

Hi my name is Mark, age 57, and I am a bit frustrated.
Until a few years ago I was a relatively successful working classical pianist. Then I was shot in the head and entered a coma for 3 months. (That "accident" also resulted in the death of my life partner.) I lost every possession that I owned due to that event.

I'll never probably work for a living again, but my first few days after coma I could not find middle c and now I am doing a fair job of most of Chopin.

Despite a wonderful staff, life in the nursing home was bleak and I am so happy to be home, even if I am now alone. I continue to take music to the home.

Please will you consider taking your music and even your students music to a local nursing facility or mental hospital? Even if you just send a student to practice page 16 of book 2, you'd be amazed at the response you might get. And we'll never know how it affects those who can no longer show emotion.

I'd be willing to pay full price for this site, but until they are willing to make some sort of arrangement for disabled and indigent MUSICIANS I will not
   

[pencilart3]

Wait... what?

[dogperson]

Hi Mark
Thanks for sharing with us such  a personal, moving experience.  We have no control over this web site, but i hope your statement of the importance of music to nursing home and mental hospital residents is heard and each one of us considers what we can contribute.

I am a returning adult pianist without a strong repertoire, but I will make the commitment to play what I can play.  I hope that others on this forum will do the same.  I tried, on another web site to get others to volunteer some time playing as a means of sharing a love of music, and was actually slammed for the suggestion.  Maybe if others hear from someone who has been there, it will have an impact.

My prayers and wishes are with you as you recover.  It seems like you have made wonderful strides.

Count me in.

[pencilart3]

Can someone smarter than me explain what the OP was about? Something about sharing the website's music stash with nursing homes?

[dogperson]

Can someone smarter than me explain what the OP was about? Something about sharing the website's music stash with nursing homes?

About each of us making a commitment to play the piano in nursing homes or mental hospitals.

[pencilart3]

About each of us making a commitment to play the piano in nursing homes or mental hospitals.

OH! cool! I do it once a month but i should do it more 

[indianajo]

They closed the nursing home in town this year, the one right on the bus route 71,  and coincidently, opened a facility in an industrial park about 10 miles from anything but warehouses.  I suppose this is a plan to make the residents buy their sundries in the company store? To make sure only the rich visit their relatives? I play piano and organ,  but can't afford to run a car anymore; they will have to make do with recorded music.  
When a friend from church went into a home at 92, her relatives picked one in an industrial park in the next county!  To visit her I would have had to endure a 3.5 hour bus ride (transfers don't synchronize in USA, causing a lot of hours standing on corners waiting for the next one) plus a 3 mile one way walk on streets with no sidewalks and a million shopping center exits to give the cars a hundred chances to strike you down.  Plus dodging the 40 ton trucks speeding to the warehouses in the parks.  I had to leave her to the organized visiting team the church runs. 
 The nursing home in town, before it closed I looked in one time.  They had a decrepit spinette organ in the TV room.  Anything I would have played, I would have been interfering with the rest of the resident's important viewing of broadcast reruns Gunsmoke or the Patty Duke show. Or on special occasions, basketball or football (retch).  Nursing homes are a group experience where they all share the common experience. I was quarentined in a base hospital once, I had to listen to the dreck the marines in the ward wanted to watch on TV for 18 hours a day. It was a vile experience.  
I'm so thrilled by a future of communal living and broadcast TV 14 hours a day, if I get feeble or decrepit, I plan to walk out in the woods in January and sit on a log until I freeze.  If my mind goes first, I don't suppose I would notice the torture of group television, would I? They tied up my 97 year old aunt with dementia in a wheel chair in a home her last year; about the only coherent thing she could say was "they keep turning that TV on, I don't want it".     Fortunately for her she died within a year.  
As far as the plea for free music download, most of the stuff here is in IMDB.org which is free.  There are also inter-library downloads that the disabled can participate in.  Do contact your county library.  There are special media mail services of recordings and books for the blind also run by the library.

[dcstudio]

I just don't know what to say...   your experience was horrific.   I am so happy that you can still play...   I enjoy playing at nursing homes and hospitals the response is always overwhelming and I always leave in tears. 

there is no more appreciative audience in the entire world.


thanks for sharing your story...  you are a very brave person.

[josh93248]

I play in homes from time to time and I enjoy it quite a bit. I would simply add my voice to the chorus saying that it's a good thing to do that every pianist should at least try.

[birba]

That you could bounce back from such a tragedy is remarkable, to say the least.  People like you are an inspiration and it makes me step back and think about the truly important things in life.  I, too, used to play in "nursing" homes and hospitols.  I found it sad and depressing in the poorer places.  But i realized it was sad and depressing for ME.  Not for them.  After reading your post i feel like doing this again.  I've been in a rut lately, thinking only about myself.  Playing for others in situations that are less then idyllic is the answer.  I suppose this is the true purpose of performing.
Thank you so much for sharing.