The silence at the centre of a room full of people with dementia can be profound.
Last year, composer John O’Hara and I spent a week working in two residential care homes on the banks of the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal on a music research residency. We would turn up at the front door with an electric piano, a pile of song books and my writing pad and biro. Each day our little rooms full of people grew until our sessions were spilling into corridors and colonising larger spaces. We watched the residents emerge over the week, often as if from a deep sleep, swimming to the surface, lighting up from within. Mrs M, who at the beginning of the week could barely open her eyes, by the end was able let out a long note, rising up out of her chair as she did so, lifted on a breath, her delight at the strength of that sound reflected on her face. It was as if she had taken the essence of the idea arrived during a conversation which was unfolding about childhood games. It had flowed quite naturally from a number of remembered songs and comfortable reminiscences about teatime’s and playground rhymes.
