Music of the Ages

Let me tell you about Dan.

You may have heard of him, a few years back a video of his work went massively viral and caused quite a stir. The video in question was a nursing home patient named Henry. Henry had dementia to such a degree that he would hardly react to people talking to him, couldn't remember which daughter of his was trying to talk to him, and generally spent most of his time hunched over whatever chair he was in.

In short, there wasn't much of a life there.

Then came Dan, and his project to use the power of music to awaken this elderly man. He played him music, and Henry came alive. After listening to a few songs, it was like a fog had been lifted, and he was able to communicate and speak to people once more, and share things about his life that no-one had been able to get out of him before.

If you haven't seen it yet, you can watch it here.
https://youtu.be/EgNLLelQYwI

Dan had come across something incredible, that music had the power to reach into those deep parts of the mind and pull the memories and pieces of self that had become lost. He'd found out they are not lost forever, merely hiding.

I had seen this clip some years ago but had never actually watched the documentary that it came from. This evening I did that. I watch Alive Inside, the documentary that followed Dan and his powerful journey through the nursing homes of America.

Dan and his filmmaker stumbled across a great many secrets and truths during the three years that the documentary followed him. A lot of those hit me harder than I thought they would.

My own grandmother had been stricken with Alzheimers and, if I'm being honest, I did not take it well. I held up well enough while she stayed at our home, as I knew it was hard for my parents too, so having a breakdown about it would not have helped anyone.

During this time, I knew she was still the same person she had been, she was kind, caring, with an independent streak a mile wide. Unfortunately, those parts of herself which gave her the experience to be independent were gone. She no longer had the tools to be herself. The personality was intact, but the building blocks of who she was, were missing.

Eventually, it came to be too much and she went to a nursing home. To my shame, I never once went to see her while she was there. Father went frequently, but I could always see in his face and eyes just how hard it was for him, not just to see his mother like that, but to see all the residents there who were suffering just for lack of companionship.

It ate at him, and I was afraid that I would never be able to handle it as well as him.

My grandmother passed away and I never said goodbye.

So why is that? Why was I so afraid of that nursing home?

For that matter, why are we so afraid of ageing? Why do we fear becoming elders in this world? Why is it a more and more common opinion to talk about doctor assisted suicide? Or even have the thought of 'I hope I die before I become that old'? Why do we fear such a natural part of our life cycle?

The medical industry has been driven by an image of people as being machines. Society itself is guilty of this. We are judged in our worth in jobs by how closely we can match an ideal of a machine-like perfection. When we are sick, it's because something in us is broken, our chemical levels aren't where they should be, and all that we have to do is fix the part, or turn a dial. We do this through medication, and procedures, endlessly popping pills and booking appointments, until finally, the machine ceases to function and grinds to its final ignominious end.

What Dan came across, was the truth that we are not machines. We are humans. From the earliest days to our final days, we connect, we yearn, we learn, we dream.  Giving music to the elderly was a gift of connection, connecting them to their lost selves. It was a gift of compassion, a man taking time out of his life to connect with these elderly. It was a gift of life, for music has within it, its own power to heal, to move, to connect.

Dan showed me why I was afraid of these homes. Why I never wanted to go into them. Because in those walls, we are no longer people, were just patients, old machines to keep going a little while longer. In that context, speaking of dying before we become that old isn't so alien a thing, after all, who wants to live for another 10 years in a place where we cannot be human? Where there is no freedom? Where we are told what to eat, what pills to have, where we can go, and what we can do? If we would not accept that at this point in our lives, why would we accept it then?

Dan's mission was to connect. If people were visited, if people connected, if people loved, in these homes, would it be such a terrible place? Why is it when our elderly reach a certain point, we just hide them away and try to forget they exist?

I don't have the answer for that. But I do know that we can change it. If we find the people like Dan, and rally around them, we can change it. If we become the kind of people who volunteer, who visit, who just talk, then we can change it. If we love, it will change.  Then maybe we won't be afraid of age. Maybe then, we can bring back the power of being an Elder. Maybe then we can let our older generation give back to us in the form of stories, wisdom, and an appreciation for connection. Maybe we can.

If you want to know more about Dan and his work, you can check out his website here.

http://www.aliveinside.us/

The New You! Or rather Us!

Right so not really the new you. More the new us. Big happenings over at Ravania, we've recently tripled the size of our art department, (which means we went from 1 to 3 art people). Woe is me, this means I have to update the website AGAIN. I mean it seems like only yesterday that I gave the book section a facelift, and if you haven't seen that yet, you should totally do that, it looks sweet.

You know what I hadn't done only yesterday though? Update this blog. Turns out it's been about a year. I guess I got a little self conscious. Back in the bad old days when the only content we had to share on the Facebook page was blog posts, it seemed like I was posting a blog post every week. 

I remember quite clearly that after sharing one said post, our like count went down by 1, and my post had a negative feed back in the insight. It did not take a genius to figure out what had happened. I suppose when you sign up for an entertainment company, and all you see is blog posts over and over again, it could be a little hard to take.

I just hadn't realized it had been a year since my last post. This came up at our last Ravania Meeting, where I was commenting on the fact that the blog section of the website was essentially useless. To this, Patrick commented that he'd actually been updating his. I didn't believe him, so I called up his blog on my phone right there in the middle of the meeting. Not only had he been updating his blog, but he'd been posting some really neat art and stuff. I was clearly and thoroughly wrong. 

I suppose that's what inspired me to dust this thing off. It'll probably get a lot more interesting too, because we've just got so dang much going on. The amount of progress we've made from last year to now is astonishing. The website is growing and so is our following. Now we've just got to keep on track so we don't let all of you down.

As for what am I doing? Right now I'm working on a re-release of Wayward Guardian. The original, though a good story, showed off my staggering lack of editorial prowess. There are comma's everywhere, and there their and they're scattered almost interchangeably through out. Mercifully I've come a long way, but not only that, I've found a new grammer checking suite which is working marvelously. When I plugged in the first 4 chapters, it came up with 318 errors. I was not amused.

Along with this re-release will be a shiny new cover from the man who did the original. Like me, he's come a long way, and is eager to give it a face-lift that will be more eye-catching and dynamic (is that a word you can use when describing art?) than ever. I'm excited. 

I'm also excited by this new found energy we've got. The fresh blood in the company is really helping us grow. We are humbled that all of you are here to see this, and we hope you stick around. The best is yet to come!

One more day.

What would you do if you had one more day?

Frequently I ask myself that question. The answer always changes based on the kind of things I'm going through in my life. It's never exactly the same thing. There's frequently similar themes in my answers to this question, but I find in my thoughts a realization. If I only had one more day, then I've run out of time.

That is exactly what it means, I know. What I mean by that is if I'm only down to my last day, then I've failed in my mission. I want to make beautiful things. Things that move people. Things that touch people on a special level. I want to tell stories, make movies, make songs, be creative. I want to spread that joy that I've managed to find in my own life. If I only had one more day, then I haven't done that enough.

I'm working hard that I can do that, and that I can do that whenever the inspiration strikes me. Right now I work to bring my life around to a point where there are no more obstacles between me and my acts of creative expression. One by one, I break down those barriers. And one day at a time, I manage to find a little more freedom for creation.

But maybe that's been the wrong approach really. Maybe I should worry about what I can make today. The long projects have a place, a very important place, but maybe there's smaller things I can do that will help people now. Does that mean I'll write a short story every day? Or a poem? Hum a song? Probably not. I think what it means is I'll look more earnestly for small things I can do for people now.

If I had one more day left, and I had to decide what to do, I want my answer to be 'nothing different'. It seems like a fools errand. Everyone's always going off looking for happiness, but seldom do they seem to find it. I'd like to put forward that if we're trying to find happiness for ourselves, we'll never find it, but if we seek to help cause it for others, we'll be able to enjoy the surplus overflow.

Till next time, Wizard out.

An alliance of Minds

Napoleon Hill, in his books about success, has an concept which he coined a 'Master Mind'. The idea behind this is that one would assemble a group of people with a shared vision, and together, work to bring this vision to fruition. There is a lot more to the concept, and a lot more depth to it than will be offered by that paltry sentence. If you aren't familiar with Napoleon Hill's works, I suggest you become so.

It occurred to me that I and the boys at Ravania have done exactly that. We are a group with a shared vision, who are all working together for a common goal. While it is true that each of us has a different flavour to said vision, we each understand that by working together, we stand to gain more than by working alone.

It also occurred to me that we had done so before I myself was familiar with Hill's work.

I just consider that a point for us really.

I never quite realized just how much I appreciated working with a team such as the one I'm part of until recently. We've got a diverse set of talents, and, more importantly, a myriad of different story telling styles and voices. It helps us to keep each other on our toes. We can look at the each others work from different angles and see things that the creator may have missed.

Not only that, but we also support and cheer each other on, this is especially important in the early stages of this game when you don't really have a whole lot going on for you. I suspect it'll still be important when we've started picking up speed, except it might be more as a means of keeping each other grounded.

Another thing is our ability to approach the problems of building our entertainment empire from different angles as well. It opens a host of new ways of solving said problems, and spreads the responsibility more evenly around.

All in all, it's very good. I'd highly recommend being part of a team. Anything you can do solo, you can also do as a team, and then you've got someone to split the pizza bill with.

Testing what makes you tick.

So I just got back from a weekend camping trip on lovely Vancouver Island. All in all, it was a pretty rad time, but as the time came to a close, I was chomping at the bit to get back and jump back into my work.

On reflection, I realize this is the first time this has happened to me. Most of the time, when vacationing, I find that I dread going back and ending my adventure. Most of the time I would dread coming back and having to sink back into my old life.

Not so on this trip. I was excited to return, happy to resume what I was doing, and determined to make even more progress towards my goals and dreams. I realize that this is a good indication that I'm doing something I love. I was so interested in returning that whenever I heard talk of plans to make the vacation last a little longer, it actually made me unhappy. I decided to jump ship and get back home with one of the campers who had to return early.

I am one of the ones who very much agrees that it's important to take a step back every now and again. Doing this lets you see how far you've come, and lets you regain perspective which may have been lost in the hustle and bustle of everything. I came back from my vacation with a lovely piece of prose and a new short story to be revealed at a later date.

However, the stepping back also lets you see something else. It lets you see how much you're enjoying our life at that moment. If your vacation is marred by the dread of returning home, then there is room for improvement. If it's dampened by all the worries you brought with you, then it may be time to learn to let some things go. Time to step away gives us an opportunity to see what were stepping away from, and also gauge how much we want to step back into it. It's just a good way to see if you actually like what your doing.

I know I do. I hope you do too.

Till next time!