AMY GOODMAN: We turn now to Alive Inside:
A Story of Music & Memory.
That's the name of a new documentary that
examines how music helps those with Alzheimer's.
You might be familiar with one of the central
characters in the film, a 90-something Alzheimer's
patient named Henry Dryer.
The documentary makers of Alive Inside posted
video of Henry on YouTube in 2012.
The clip began with video of him looking largely
unresponsive to the outside world.
Then he's given a pair of headphones to listen
to Cab Calloway, his favorite.
The music energizes him, awakens him, brings
back old memories.
The clip of Henry went viral, was seen nearly
10 million times.
Well, the film Alive Inside is now done and
has just premiered here in Park City at the
Sundance Film Festival.
Here's an excerpt featuring Henry.
YVONNE RUSSELL: He was very isolated, and
he used to always sit on the unit with his
head like this.
He didn't really to much people.
And then when I introduced the music to him,
this is his reaction ever since.
DR.
OLIVER SACKS: So, in some sense, Henry has
reacquired his identity for a while through
the power of music.
INTERVIEWER: What does music do to you?
HENRY DRYER: It gives me the feeling of love,
romance, because right now the world needs
to come into music, singing.
You've got beautiful music here.
Beautiful, oh, lovely.
And I feel a band of love, dream.
AMY GOODMAN: That's an excerpt from Alive
Inside: A Story of Music & Memory.
The film follows a social worker named Dan
Cohen, who is campaigning to bring iPods to
nursing homes.
With more than five million Americans living
with dementia or memory loss, Dan is hoping
to greatly expand his program.
Dan Cohen joins us here in Park City, Utah.
He is a social worker, founding executive
director of Music & Memory.
We're also joined by Michael Rossato-Bennett,
director and producer of Alive Inside: The
Story of Music & Memory.
Well, we watched this film on the plane from
Tokyo, Japan, to Park City, Utah, and was
totally astounded.
Dan, talk about your discovery, how you ended
up in a nursing home and bringing these headphones
to the people there.
DAN COHEN: Well, in 2006, I was listening
to a journalist talking about how iPods are
ubiquitous, they're everywhere.
And I thought, well, young people all have
them, many adults, but a nursing home?
And if I'm ever in a nursing home, would I
have access to my favorite '60s music?
So I did an Internet search on iPods and nursing
homes.
And even though there are 16,000 nursing homes
in the U.S., I couldn't find one that was
using iPods for their residents.
So I called up a local nursing home, and I
said, "I know music is already your number
one recreational activity, but can we see
if there's any added value if we were to totally
personalize music for individuals?"
So I came in with my laptop and some iPods,
and it was an instant and definitive hit with
folks there.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, talk about what happens.
Talk about the transformation.
DAN COHEN: Well, when I first started, they
didn't connect me with people with dementia.
They didn't really know me.
I was a volunteer coming in.
But still, for people who are cognitively
sharp as a tack but have physical issues,
it really transformed their mood, their emotion.
People who were depressed now were feeling
better.
People who were not very interactive with
others became more social.
So, it just had different benefits for everybody.
AMY GOODMAN: Set up this clip for us.
It's the clip about Denise.
DAN COHEN: Well, Denise is a bipolar schizophrenic,
is very sort of busy with a lot of thoughts
and trying to sort of make her way through
the day.
The music—and very raw with emotions in
all different directions, happy and sad and
angry.
And the music helps to—well, gives her a
source of enjoyment and distracts her from
that, and it's just really a real benefit
for her.
AMY GOODMAN: So, this clip begins with one
of the people who work at the nursing home
and then Denise.
NURSE: Denise is probably an extreme resident
that we have here.
DENISE: I'm being emphatic, and I have a very
vivid imagination.
I'm very resilient, and I drop.
And I keep on trying, and I drop.
But I never stop, and I drop.
One of these days I'm going to drop and stay
on the floor!
I won't fall.
DAN COHEN: OK, OK.
DENISE: I've lived here two years and never
fell.
DAN COHEN: Good.
I couldn't believe the music let Denise push
away her walker.
She'd been using that walker every day for
two years.
DENISE: It's Spanish.
You're not Spanish.
DAN COHEN: No, I'm not Spanish.
OK, now I'll follow your lead.
DENISE: I'm having fun.
DAN COHEN: Good!
Me, too.
We had seen what music can do for memory,
but with Denise, we saw what music can do
for the spirit.
AMY GOODMAN: An excerpt from Alive Inside:
A Story of Music & Memory.
For our radio audience, that clip, yes, began
with Denise sitting in her wheelchair.
Then she's given headphones playing salsa
music.
The clip ends with her standing up and dancing.
We're joined by Dan Cohen, who's a social
worker who thought of bringing in these headphones
to the nursing home, and Michael Rossato-Bennett,
who filmed all of this.
Michael, talk about how you came into this.
MICHAEL ROSSATO-BENNETT: Well, we were—I
saw—you know, Dan had a beautiful project,
and I had done work for the Shelley & Donald
Rubin Foundation, and I was asked to help
out a little bit.
And when I saw what was happening, I was like,
the only way to tell this story is through
film, because this is, you know, so amazing.
But I had a—when I was younger, I had like
a lot of kind of bad experiences in hospitals.
And I went into these nursing homes with Dan,
and I saw all these elders just sort of sitting
along the walls and with their heads down,
and it was a very scary experience for me
to be there.
And I couldn't—I really actually couldn't
imagine—can you imagine living in that environment,
ending your life in that environment?
And it was actually sort of frightening for
me to actually enter this place that was their
home, you know?
And so, then, one of the first people, if
not the first person, that I saw was Henry.
You know, we set up our cameras, and this
guy came in, and he was just completely gone
to the world, right?
And then, when he got his headphones and when
he came alive—you know, we talk about it
in the film, but there is sort of a kinesthetic
reaction that happens to you.
When you see somebody like come to life, it
really just completely does something to you.
And, you know, that first day, I cried, literally,
five times.
And I don't ever cry, ever.
And, you know, you see these people living
just really such sad lives.
AMY GOODMAN: And certainly, Dan, this goes
beyond people with dementia or Alzheimer's.
DAN COHEN: Yes, just the way we all love music,
and when we get older, we're going to still
love music.
And so, just because someone is in a nursing
home, and they're old, and they can no longer
operate equipment, and they very often lose
access to their favorite music, so we really
want to restore that access for everyone,
regardless of whether they have dementia or
not.
AMY GOODMAN: And talk about how it taps into
something.
It not only—they're not only just, you know,
rocking out to the beat.
It's bringing back memories.
They're sometimes talking, and they haven't
talked in months.
DAN COHEN: Yeah, so, with advanced dementia,
when people no longer can recognize their
own family members, they stop speaking.
But when they hear music that's familiar from
their youth, because those memories are preserved,
they come alive.
They connect with that.
It's a direct sort of a backdoor to that failing
cognitive system right to the emotional system,
which is really very much intact.
And what we love—what music does, the way
we connect with music is really very much
emotional and visceral.
AMY GOODMAN: Let's go to another clip from
Alive Inside: A Story of Music & Memory.
This is recreation therapist Yvonne Russell.
YVONNE RUSSELL: I have one resident that barely
opened her eyes.
She didn't respond.
As much as I tried in over two years, no matter
what I tried, massage wouldn't work.
Nothing worked.
But when we got introduced to the iPods and
the family told me the things that she liked,
it was amazing once we put the iPod on her.
She started shaking her feet.
She started moving her head.
Her son was just amazed.
OK, can we stop?
Because now I'm getting all—I'm seeing her
all over again.
AMY GOODMAN: That was Yvonne Russell, the
recreation therapist in the nursing home,
describing her patient.
I mean, Dan, for the people listening on radio
who can't see, and just overall, talk about
what happened to this woman who was laying
in the bed.
DAN COHEN: This woman is laying, and she's
kind of in a fetal position and eyes closed,
and she's really, you know, end of life, and
there's no—there's no sitting up.
She's bedridden.
And the music comes on, and she appears comatose
at first, but she then starts shaking, writhing
to the music.
Her head's moving.
Her body is moving.
Even though her eyes are closed and she's
lying down in this fetal position, it's just
really moving to watch.
AMY GOODMAN: You know, years ago, my grandmother,
well, lived 'til 108.
And she wasn't senile.
She did not suffer from dementia.
But in those last years, she was very hard
of hearing.
And I was talking to her, and I was racing
off for a radio interview, and I said, "I
have to go."
She said, "What, darling?"
I said, "I have to leave."
She said, "What, darling?"
And I'm so frustrated, so I said—and I realize
I'm holding my tape recorder and the headphones.
And I just put them on her head, and I said,
"I have to go, Grandma."
She said, "So then what's keeping you?"
And that just changed everything.
I spoke into the mic, and I put the headphones
on her.
So then, when we had lunch with my brothers
and my mom, I would put the headphones on
her, and I'd say, "Let's pass the mic when
we're talking," just even to each other, not
even to her.
And then she is a part of the conversation,
because so often older people—I mean, people
are polite.
They don't want to keep saying, "What?"
Michael, let me ask you about that, that experience
of not just music, but hearing people's voices
in full throttle.
MICHAEL ROSSATO-BENNETT: Right.
That's one of the things that touched me so
much about this whole experience, is that
for people with dementia, they're really struggling
with the outside world, and the stimulus is
so overwhelming, and they don't have the ability
to sort of discern what's happening.
And when you put headphones on a person like
that, there's a double gift.
Not only is the music incredible, but what
you're doing is you're limiting the world
to something that is totally pleasurable and
is simple and is a lot of—the beat is like—it
keeps going.
There's a lot of faith involved in it.
And so the world becomes a much more beautiful
place, like the entire—the entire, like,
craziness of maybe the institution that they're
living in disappears.
And one thing that was so profound for me
was the depth of emotion that they were capable
of.
Do you know—like, you see these people,
and you can't help but say, you know, they're
not as alive as the rest of us.
But then when you see them—the world kind
of going into a place where they're comfortable
and where they're deeply profound, that was
what really blew me away, was that these people
that sort of it seemed like everyone thinks
are gone are literally capable of profound
experience at the level that we are, you know,
and that was a shocker for me.
And—
AMY GOODMAN: Every part of this film—I mean,
you deal, overall, Dan, with the issue of
what you call "elderhood."
What are we doing with the older people in
our society who could contribute so much?
In nursing homes—we're not talking about
rat-infested, cockroach-crawling nursing homes—the
very opposite.
We're talking about clean, antiseptic, four
white walls, people who already their lives
sort of stripped away from them, their identities
they have known.
That's what they're left with in the last
years of their life, and yet there's so much
that could be, so much that could be.
DAN COHEN: So, the nursing homes—because
our society reduces every year the amount
of money going to nursing home care, the nursing
homes, filled with great staff, dedicated
people, have to do the same—give the same
level of service every year to this group
of people.
And so, as a result, they have to have activities
for the group as opposed to the individual.
But when we're in a nursing home, there are
all sorts of individual activities and hobbies
we'd like to do, but it's just—it's very
hard for them to carry that out.
So, as a society, we need to really support
these long-term care facilities more.
AMY GOODMAN: What are the numbers we're talking
about?
One million people in nursing home—
DAN COHEN: So, 1.6 million, approximately,
living in 16,000 nursing homes, plus another
million people living in assisted living facilities.
Forty percent of those folks in assisted living
have some form of dementia, as well.
And then you have seven million people being
cared for at home.
And, of course, five million of all—five
million people in the U.S. have dementia.
AMY GOODMAN: You say in the film doctors can
write out a prescription for a thousand dollars
for antidepressants, but it's hard to get
$40 for a CD player.
DAN COHEN: Yes.
It just doesn't—it's not reimbursable.
It's not an acceptable expense.
So, the drugs—
AMY GOODMAN: And the drug companies don't
make money.
DAN COHEN: And—well, right now, our system
is set up that if it's a drug, regardless
of what it is, regardless of the side effects,
because we are really giving these folks antipsychotic
medications to help calm them down, but they're
really not meant for this, and the side effects
are so dramatic that the government is telling
them, "Please, all doctors, slow down on your
use of these."
And doctors in nursing homes, and also someone
at home whose mom might have been behaving
out of control, and the daughter says, "Doc,
give my mom something, please."
So, it's just our approach to, like, we need
medications to help.
AMY GOODMAN: And you talk about how in other
cultures elders are brought into society,
to work—I mean, being there with children,
who are left alone also.
But people are so isolated.
We have no place now in our society.
DAN COHEN: Well, that's very true.
And so now we have these institutions where
we'd love to get the community in more.
So, I like to say that, gee, my local school,
I can hardly find a parking space, but it's
never a problem in a nursing home.
But as people with dementia become—when
I started this, people said, "Dan, you're
going to isolate people even more by putting
headphones on them."
And it turned out just the opposite happened:
People became more social.
"Oh, you've got to hear this.
Oh, this reminds me of when I met my husband,"
or, "You're about my age.
Remember the Andrews Sisters?"
AMY GOODMAN: And you have kids bringing in—
DAN COHEN: So, let's—
AMY GOODMAN: —iPods to older people—
DAN COHEN: Yes.
AMY GOODMAN: —and then they're hanging out
with the older people together.
DAN COHEN: It's the perfect storm for intergenerational
activity.
AMY GOODMAN: I want to thank you both for
being with us.
The film is amazing.
Dan Cohen, social worker, founding executive
director of Music & Memory, his work inspired
the new documentary, Alive Inside: A Story
of Music & Memory.
Michael Rossato-Bennett is the director and
producer of the film.
That does it for the show.
