Add to Queue: Willy Gilder’s Aural Stimulus

Ever since I was a child, I have drawn. Every scrap of paper was covered in doodles, and I was never happier than when given art materials. Through my adult life I rather lost touch with art whilst pursuing a career and raising a family, but 25 years or so ago took it up more seriously – attending life drawing groups and getting involved with art groups where I lived, in Northamptonshire. I was pleased to get work into exhibitions and sell the odd picture. If people asked me about what art meant to me, I would say that if I couldn’t draw, it would be like part of my brain was going unused. I never realised how prophetic that saying was.

That all changed four years ago, though. I seemed to lose interest in art, and when I tried to draw I found I seemed to have lost the skill; I could no longer turn objects in the world around me into recognisable drawings. I could create abstract patterns, but that was all. To say this was puzzling to me was an understatement.

At the time I had become convinced that I had something wrong in my brain. I cannot adequately explain this, and the psychiatrists in charge of my care were dismissive of my claims. When I moved up to Scotland, however, my new consultant took things more seriously and commissioned a brain scan. This CT scan showed that something was indeed amiss, and my brain had lost an amount of volume. So, in turn, I had two further scans: an MRI and a SPECT scan, in which a radioactive dye traces blood flow in the brain.

By this time I had met a neurologist who was suggesting that I had early stage Alzheimer’s Disease – this was confirmed with a lumbar puncture and by checking the images from the scans. Where all of my brain should be yellow, the SPECT scan showed blobs of blue where blood was no longer flowing. Specifically, my parietal lobes were compromised on each side of my head.

Most commonly, Alzheimer’s starts its corrosion in the hippocampus, at the back of the head: the part of the brain that organises memory. But I seemed to have a different flavour of disease. Two weeks after my diagnosis I began to experience issues with my eyesight, seeing part of my right field of vision blocked by a black blob. My optician sent me, with some speed, to the eye pavilion in Edinburgh where checks showed that I have nothing wrong with my eyes – but my brain is playing tricks on me. This became particularly peculiar when I saw the shower basin as covered in grey hairs.

So, I was starting to realise that my brain disease could affect me in strange ways, but I hadn’t associated it with my loss of interest in art. One day, though, I determined to try and find out more. Which part of the brain, I wondered, controlled drawing? Google helpfully found some American research for me that demonstrated clearly that this is in the parietal lobes. Oh! This left me rather forlorn. It seemed that the hobby I loved was now going to be denied me forever.

I used to work as a journalist, and have a bit of a magpie brain that scavenges bits of information from all over the place. From somewhere or other I had heard of the idea that personally meaningful music can help people with dementia – that is, the music you grew up with, that you were listening to in your teens and twenties.

I was a Sixties kid. Radio Caroline was anchored just a few miles from where I grew up in Suffolk, and I existed off a diet of pop music. So, I bought a smart speaker and prescribed myself a two week course of listening to The Beatles and the Stones, with the odd Kinks track thrown in.

The effect was remarkable. There wasn’t a flash of blinding light, but after several days’ immersion in pop I began to realise that both my interest, and skills, in drawing had returned. Alleluia! So long as ‘Hey Jude’ or ‘Satisfaction’ was playing, I could make art again. For a time, I had to have music playing – but the more I got back into creating, the easier it became, so that I no longer needed the aural stimulus.

I’ve since discovered the charity Playlist for Life, who have done research into the therapeutic power of music. They have examples of care homes needing to dispense fewer sedatives after they’ve harnessed musical interventions. The charity helps people draw up their own playlists of important music – whether it be pop or classical, songs from the shows or advertising jingles.

For me, I am left wanting to draw and paint as much as possible. I worry that I might again lose my gift, and have become aware of what a precious thing a talent is. I’m left puzzled about what has actually happened in my brain, and keen to promote the power of music as therapy to anyone who will listen. Recently I’ve met researchers from The University of Swansea who have devised a new way of analysing which part of the brain is used for different activities; so, I hope I might be able to learn more.

In the meantime, I’m enjoying getting back to something I love. I have a long time favourite Rolling Stones song; in the words of Mick Jagger, ‘You can’t always get what you want, but if you try sometime, you just might find, you get what you need.’ I got back something I wanted, and something I needed. Thanks Mick, and thanks John, Paul, George and Ringo.