Cell 2 Soul: The Humane Health Care Blog

Melodies of Healing and Caring

Recently, I was visiting Kauai, that magical Pacific island, and some friends took me to their favorite Indian restaurant in Kapaa town.  There, I chanced to meet my old friend, Tim Lee, an ophthalmologist and an accomplished pianist.  During our brief conversation, he told me about work he’s been doing with other physician-musicians in Hawaii, particularly, his partner on Kauai, Dr. Jean Shein, and Honolulu ophthalmic surgeon Dr. Jorge Camara. 

If you want to read more about music and medicine please:  Download The Music of Healing. Your comments will be appreciated.

  Drs. Jorge Camara, Jean Shein and Tim Lee

Nina's Musical Canon

As the project for a class on the Medical Humanities, Williams College sophomore, Nina Piazza created her Musical Canon. One usually thinks of a canon as a collection of literary works.  Nina has taken the concept to another level. 

Music has always been a driving force in my life, ever since I began to learn to play the piano at the age of six. I never really embraced classical music until I started to play it myself. Since then, it has inspired and changed me. Music, of all sorts, has been here for me throughout my whole life. I love books and reading, but they have never provided the emotional connection that music has.  Nina.

You may contact Nina at: NP Email.

 

 

Claude Debussy's La Fille Aux Cheveaux de Lin is the first piece on her Canon.

Here are the links to the rest::

2. Rilo Kiley: Science vs. Romance

3. Creston: Concertino for Marimba

4. Hancock: Chamelion

5. Stravinsky: L'Oiseau de Feu

6. Mitchell: The Circle Game

7. Holst: Jupiter the Bringer of Jollity

8. The Beatles: Blackbird

9. Chopin: Nocturne #1 in C Sharp Minor, Op. 27

10. Mussorgsky: Pictures at an Exhibition, The Grand Gate at Kiev

Here's Nina's complete canon in an easy to read format: Download My Musical Canon.

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Marginal Notes: Streets of Philadelphia

Back in my room on the 14^th floor of the hotel I stood at the window and looked down on the gleaming streets of the city.  I thought about the man I had seen slumped over a makeshift cardboard sign on which was scrawled one word:  “Hungry.”  A tangled mass of black hair emanated from the back of his stocking cap, his coat was marred with grease stains, his ankles showed white between the tattered cuffs of his trousers and the tops of his dirty sneakers.  When I dropped a few coins into the plastic bowl in his lap, he barely stirred. In thirty years the streets of Philadelphia haven’t changed much. >>more

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog. The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau: "I love a broad margin to my life."

Marginal Notes: Sympathetic Resonance

Any vibrating object—a wooden reed, a string, a cymbal, a bell—produces sound waves.  These waves are capable of causing a second object in close proximity to sound as well, even though the second object is not set in motion directly by physical means.  This phenomenon is called sympathetic resonance.

Vibrating objects with musical tonality are not the only things that resonate.  Words are capable of doing the same thing, albeit in a different way....more

 

Brian T. Maurer has practiced pediatrics as a Physician Assistant for thirty years.  His "Marginal Notes" column appears periodically in the Cell2Soul Blog.  The title "Marginal Notes" is taken from a quote by Henry David Thoreau:  "I love a broad margin to my life." 

 

Thula Mama

TED stands for Technology, Entertainment, Design. It started out (in 1984) as a conference bringing together people from those three worlds. Since then its scope has become ever broader.

The annual conference now brings together the world's most fascinating thinkers and doers, who are challenged to give the talk of their lives (in 18 minutes).

TED Global is a sister conference held every other year, and in a different country on each occasion. The first conference was held in Oxford, England, in 2005; the second, in June 2007, was held in Arusha, Tanzania. 

Thula Mama was written and performed by South African singer songwriter Vusi Mahlasela.  If you can spare ten minutes, you will appreciate this moving tribute to his grandmother which was sung at TED Global Arusha 2007.

Caramba

Amid Despair in a Venezuelan Prison, Strains of Hope From a Music Program

This article from the NY Times movingly describes a project extending Venezuela’s renowned system of youth orchestras to some of the country’s most hardened prisons.  Hundreds of other prisoners are learning a repertory that includes Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony and folk songs from the Venezuelan plains.

To read full article go to Permalink

Music and Sound for Health and Healing

Stephen Dankner, the composer-in-residence with the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra, has sent us a fascinating, thought-provoking essay. You may send comments to him at sdankner@earthlink.net.

"Something new and radically different is happening. It’s music – really sound – for healing and therapy – a homeopathic alternative to traditional medicine and as therapeutic treatment for mind and body, both palliative and long lasting. Can sound relieve pain – even cure what ails you?"

This is an important article; please read on.  Download Dankner.pdf

Steve Dankner's essay was first published February, 2008 in "The Advocate" newspaper, serving Berkshire County, Massachusetts and southwestern Vermont.

Music is the Universal Language of Mankind: Longfellow

If a composer could say what he had to say in words he would not bother trying to say it in music.  ~Gustav Mahler

Yesterday, we were exposed to two proofs of Mahler's words.

1. An NPR interview with pianist, Van Cliburn, on the 50th anniversary of his winning the prestigious International Tchaikovsky Competition in Moscow.  Cliburn quotes Rachmaninoff twice:
    The horizon is always receding in art.
    Music is enough for a lifetime, but a lifetime is not enough for music.
The NPR piece Van Cliburn: Treasuring Moscow After 50 Years is 17 minutes long but is worth listening to.

2. If you have a chance, you will be transfixed by a movie about children in Northern Uganda. In War/Dance, a profoundly moving cinematic work of art, an indomitable beacon of light shines within a world of darkness. For the last 20 years, northern Uganda has been at war with a rebel force, the Lord's Resistance Army (LRA). In this war zone, children are not only the victims of the rebels--they are the rebels. The LRA employs a horrifically effective process to fill its ranks--abducting children.

War/Dance follows the historic journey of three of these children--Dominic, Rose, and Nancy--and their school in the Patongo refugee camp, the first school from the northern war zone to make it to the finals of Uganda's national music and dance competition.

Amidst unimaginable violence and grief, these children sing and dance: they sing with vitality; they sing without fear; they sing in protest and in celebration. They dance and stomp to the rhythms of their ancestors. Devastated by the horrors of war, they carry the hopes and dreams of their entire village with them. Husband and wife filmmaking team Sean Fine and Andrea Nix Fine have crafted a consummate work that elevates nonfiction filmmaking to its highest level. War/Dance will renew your faith in the power of the human spirit to soar despite unspeakable odds.— David Courier (Sundance Festival Text)

Asperger's Syndrome

In the August 20th, 2007 issue of The New Yorker, Tim Page, music critic for the Washington Post, reveals that he had been diagnosed with Asperger's Syndrome, "in the course of a protracted effort to identify - and, if possible, alleviate - my lifelong unease". The article is Parallel Play, A lifetime of restless isolation explained, by Tim Page

It can be found at: Tim Page Asperger's and is well-worth reading.

There is also an NPR Fresh Air interview with Tim Page at: NPR Page  This page has links to other NPR pieces on Asperger's syndrome.