Tony Bennett, the Brain and Impeachment
Terry H. Schwadron
Feb. 3, 2021
Within the news that singer Tony Bennett is battling with Alzheimer’s disease was a remarkable reminder: When he is singing, Bennett remembers all the words. His instinctive self takes over.
Whatever other accommodations he must make, when the part of the brain that controls music kicks in, Bennett is his own, wonderfully musical self, stylishly able to translate lyrics into memorable tonality, harmony and rhythm — and even to work with Lady Gaga to make a recorded duet.
“He’s not the old Tony anymore,” his wife, Susan Bennett, told the AARP magazine. “But when he sings, he’s the old Tony.”
This split-brain response shows that we retain a certain sense of processing in the part of the brain where music and movement live, That’s something we should be exploring to determine how to cope through our divisive, very noisy times. Indeed, I’d argue that, as a society, we’re working overtime to keep the wrong aspects of partisan divisiveness and procedural maneuverings front-most while ignoring what we know.
Let’s look instead at New York City’s Mark Morris Dance Company, where those facing restrictions from Parkinson’s disease find that dancing helps them bypass the limiting parts of their brain to allow them to move relatively smoothly and rhythmically.
Nursing home recreation directors talk about using song to jar declining memories among seniors to promote spryness, lessen pain and keep patients active. “Music has the power to stimulate feelings of well-being by evoking powerful memories and emotions. Seniors who have trouble remembering recent events may find meaning in songs that bring back older memories,“ notes the ElderCare Alliance.
What The Brain and Culture Know
There is important something here that should demand our attention. There is a reason that we all responded so positively to hearing the melodic poetry of inaugural poet Amanda Gordon, for example, or found that the Inauguration itself, like other public rites, almost demanded having music.
It’s not just about blaring anthems at political rallies to get adherents juiced up. When there is a need to express joy or to mourn or to show caring (or presumably the opposite) to those around us, we turn to music, movement and visual signals including colored flags and, yes, hats.
On the day that Joe Biden was finally declared the winner of the November election, cities erupted in spontaneous music and dance. At the Donald Trump rallies, Trump-clad supporters were yelling lyrics lustily to “YMCA” as a shared experience.
The politicians may not recognize the science, but they do see the effects alternately to hope to calm as well as entertain, or to amp up their crowds.
Our brains “are hard-wired to distinguish music from noise and to respond to rhythm and repetition, tones and tunes,” the Harvard Medical School tells us, noting that scientists still are probing what exactly is biological accident and what is the brain’s taught intention. “A varied group of studies suggests that music may enhance human health and performance.
The Harvard publication notes that “Music is a fundamental attribute of the human species. Virtually all cultures, from the most primitive to the most advanced, make music. It’s been true through history, and it’s true throughout an individual’s lifespan. In tune or not, we humans sing and hum; in time or not, we clap and sway; in step or not, we dance and bounce.”
We Got Noise
Whatever else you want to conclude from our pandemic times, we’ve gotten plenty of Noise — noise from fact-averse opponents, noise from social media, noise about whatever side of Cancel Culture you find most obnoxious.
Just in case you need a reminder of the extent of nuttiness, check out Axios’ Inside the craziest meeting of the Trump presidency about the gathering of conspiracists that underscore the Noise over of both the “overwhelming” pro-impeachment arguments and weaker Trump’s procedural defenses that were disclosed yesterday. In his Washington Post analysis, columnist Phillip Bump calls the Trump defense “laughable” and notes that it actually contradicts itself both about Trump’s involvement and about using legal changes in voting for pandemic as assertion of “fraud.”
In one side of the brain we hear the opposing sides, but in the other, where we hear the music, we know that Trump was at the heart of the Insurrection, legalisms not withstanding. Yet a Senate failure to convict is not in question, only the shape of the arguments — while the Noise has been upped to 11.
As public policy, we are much more apt to talk about prosecuting or locking up our opponents or slamming new rules on the nature of speech than we are about finding comfort in that ability of music and movement provide to separate the worst of incessant anti-humane political talk from what really matters.
This week, we’ve been hearing a lot more — for and against — “unity” as Joe Biden has used it, to focus our attention less on partisan politics and more on the very practical and aspirational needs we all share for health, jobs, prosperity, education and acceptable environment.
One question at the now daily White House press conference asked impossibly for any press secretary, how Biden is defining “bipartisanship,” whether the word means just listening to Republicans or literally accepting their limitations on what he has proposed to address coronavirus-related aid.
If you have to ask the question, you already know the answer: We’re not listening to the actual needs. We’re only hearing the Noise.
As with Tony Bennett, we know in that part of our brain that goes on functioning well that we should be working to heal one another — with vaccines, health care access, jobs and reason.
We should ignore the noise and let the natural melodies soar.
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