Music and Dementia

I was in the mood to do what I call acrylic sketching today (above landscape). I’ve been painting in my sketch book recently. And, I can’t wait to get back to painting on canvas. The paint goes on so differently on the paper. I love the paint on the canvas because there is some give to it as you paint. Why is that important to me? I don’t know, but I do like the feel.

I plan to do a painting soon on canvas of a hill country pathway like one that would’ve been painted in the 18th century, and I plan to frame it in an old timey ornate gold frame, the kind can only be gotten (affordably) at a thrift store these days.

Music and Dementia

As I was cleaning up from the day’s painting my daughter, who had been playing her precise classical pieces and jazzed up versions of her other songs, sat and improvised on the piano The House of the Rising Sun and my husband began belting with more feeling than most people sing… the lyrics: “There is a house in New Orleans…”

There are more interesting changes in my husband’s dementia than the delusions, hallucinations, forgetting and wandering and weird behavior.

Sometimes there are good things.

My husband never before cared much about music. He certainly never sang except for in church. And then I would have to strain to hear the proper tune to sing because he was so off.

He has developed a whole new kind of a talent now for singing. Knows all the words to all the songs though he doesn’t know the president, how old his daughter is, the city he’s in or what he ate for lunch.

And he’s quite on pitch now. Do you think that the difference in his musical ability is because now he doesn’t hold back?

We have music in our home all the time.

And when not at home, we sing CD’s … from old time gospel to John Denver to Queen.

“We are the champions, my friends….”