Neuroscience still cannot explain how a man whose speaking voice has become so hesitant – whose memory of events, people and places has largely disappeared – can, at the sound of a musical cue, raise his voice in a song with such beauty and expression, except to say that music and singing emerge, as Levitin pointed out, from areas of the brain quite distinct from those associated with speech and language. The powerful feelings released by music can connect listeners to their deep emotional memories, even those inaccessible to the conscious mind.
And so it was, for the next hour, a miraculous concert that was, literally, a gift for an observer and a walk along the road of memory.
“How about Duke Ellington’s music?” Musiker said – and immediately, Tony’s voice floated towards the ceiling like notes from a lovely mute trumpet.
“In my loneliness,” he sang, “You haunt me / With terrible ease / From the days that have passed./ In my loneliness / You insult me / With memories / That never die.”
In “Boulevard of Broken Dreams”, the first single he recorded for Columbia in 1950, Tony, aged 23, ended the song with a complete bel canto rattlesnake – and surprisingly he reproduced it now: “… and dance along the boulevaaaaaahd of dreams brooooooken! “In” Fly Me to the Moon “, he raised his voice gently in the air, just as he had done in his beautiful 1965 recording, and in the fast pace” The Lady’s in Love With You “, he nimbly moved through the intricate lyrics as if it was spreading. He ended his interpretation of “Smile” (“… however his heart is breaking …”) with a long “smiiiiiiiiiiile” that made Susan use an expression that Tony liked to say when he got the version right definitive song: “Right there,” she said. Musiker shook his head in surprise, looked at Tony and slammed his fist against his heart.
“That’s it,” he said to Tony. “The heart.”
“Every time,” said Tony – his first spontaneous verbal reaction in the afternoon. As the rehearsal continued, he exchanged more and more short conversations with Musiker. At the end of an exciting “When You’re Smiling”, the musician jokingly alluded to his audience of three people like 3 million people. “Actually,” he added, “you once said that if at least one person – remember you said that years ago?”
“Oh, yes,” said Tony.
“If there is a person in the club,” said Musiker.
“So you really give it to him,” said Tony. “It’s really that intimate.”
Later, when I talked to Musiker about what makes Tony special, he said: “Proper vocal training and the musician’s innate sense, not the singer’s innate sense. As an instrumentalist, he hears everything. It constantly knocks me out. So, complete honesty and love. “
The often miraculous way that music can reconnect patients with dementia to family and friends, memory and the past is, unfortunately, temporary. Lucidity, memory, conversation can take a few minutes. But for those who yearn for the old connection, who desperately lose the spark of animation in a loved one, even these brief glimpses of the person they met, these fleeting connections, arrive as a blessing. For Susan, Tony’s obvious pleasure in singing is a precious gift. “I would like him to continue painting, but it didn’t work like the singing did.” The charcoal landscape on her easel, she said, was a rarity. But not the song. Not yet. “Singing is everything for him,” said Susan, as I packed to leave. “Everything. It saved his life many times. Many times. Through divorces and things like that. If he stops singing, that’s when we’ll know …” Her voice failed, she stopped.
Two days earlier, actor Sean Connery had died, at age 90, of dementia. Connery’s widow said that in his final months he had been unable to communicate, but that, fortunately, he quietly escaped in his sleep. “I’m waiting for this with Tony,” Susan told me. “I hope he just goes to sleep one night and that’s it. I’m hoping and praying it won’t get worse, which is really crazy. ”She was silent for a moment. Then she smiled. “There are many things about him that I miss,” she said. “Because he’s not old Tony anymore.” Again, her voice failed and she looked down. Then she controlled herself, looked at me and smiled. “But when he sings, he’s old Tony.”