Lyndsey Larson

Adrienne Cassel

English Comp 1201-219

30 January 2018

The Music House

Growing up in a small rural Ohio town, I was hardly ever exposed to

music that wasn't my parent's favorite bands or mainstream music I heard on

the radio. Music played a role in my life when I was young, but it hardly ever

left a strong impression on me. When I turned 18, I started spending loads of

time with my boyfriend's cousin, Alli, and her friend Malacai. Alli was my age

and a timid girl with hair that changed with her mood. She had a wonderful

voice and wrote and played all her own material that I had the pleasure of

listening to. Malacai was unique also, he was like a real-life Peter Pan. His hair

changed from dreads, to an unruly mohawk, to a long lion's mane in the time I

knew him. He had a really unimpeded way of living his life; he never cared

what people thought, he saw the unknown as an adventure and it rubbed off

on anyone he met. He was also an extremely talented musician; he could pick

up any instrument for the first time and play it like he'd been taking lessons for

years.

We spent many of our teenage nights around a campfire, singing with

our arms around each other, laughing, loving, discovering who we were
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becoming; it was an entirely new kind of life for me. Furthermore, it was the

kind of music they listened to that gave me a new musical appreciation. Music

finally had meaning to me; It meant heart bursting happiness that brought on

dance, deep heartache that made me weep, and for the first time music helped

me feel sexy and more confident.

Soon after my 21st birthday I lost my job and for a fresh start my

boyfriend and I decided to move to Dayton. While searching for a new home an

opportunity to rent the most character filled house came upon us. The Hillcrest

house was an enormous old house and from the corner it sat on, it looked like

a giant dollhouse, as if you could just lift the top right off. It was brown and

pink with a window filled room at the entrance. Inside French doors framed

every entryway. There was a magical closet under the stairs, a window bed

overlooked the street that cried out to be napped in, and in one of the

bathrooms was an old clawfoot bathtub that I miss soaking in very much. The

house was too big and too expensive for my boyfriend and I, so we enlisted Alli

and Malacai to move in with us.

It didn't take long for Alli and Malacai to make friends with a great deal

of local musicians and we started putting together some epic house shows. We

would make a lineup of four to six bands and depending on the genre we'd

strategically schedule them through the night. Loud crazy punk bands played

in my dirty, cellar basement early in the evening and the string bands played in

our charming dining room. Sometimes bands traveling around the country or
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even the world played at my house, and sometimes my housemate's bands

would play. Oftentimes there would be a hundred people in my house and a

different scene in every room. I remember one night I got home from work and

found my middle school choir teacher, who had come to see Ali play, hitting a

joint and passing it on to the listener next to him. These shows happened

about once a month for three years.

In August of 2013 Malacai moved out to hitchhike across the country

and Alli moved to Yellow Springs to attend school at Antioch, so I got new

roommates. We had a handful of shows after that but it was never the same. In

2014, Malacai came home from his travels and moved in with his girlfriend. On

the evening of July 9, 2014, driving his motorcycle home from work, Malacai

was hit by a drunk driver. He had been wearing a helmet but it didn't save him

from massive trauma to his brain. For a while there was a lot of uncertainty

about whether he'd live or not, but he is still with us although the accident

changed him forever. He lost complete function of his body and lost the ability

to speak. He will never live the same kind of life. He will probably also never get

to experience playing music again, but how do TBI patients experience music?

Music is proven to have great benefits for TBI (traumatic brain injury)

patients. One of the biggest challenges patients experience is agitation which is

the result of the frustrations that come with losing some or all independence,

or noises having a much more profound and confusing affect than before.

According to the article "Effect of Preferred Music on Agitation After Traumatic

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Brain Injury" written by Soohyun Park, Reg Arthur Williams, and Donghyun

Lee in 2016 "preferred music" or music that the patient loved before the

accident is proven to reduce agitation and to help the patient have more

reasonable responses to stressful events. The reason the music is able to help

is because it stimulates the happy feelings the patient used to experience while

listening to the songs in the past. The therapy music provides is unparalleled

and can be a very effective nonmedication tool for a patient to control agitation.

Another benefit music has on TBI patients is its ability to increase the

use of body and brain function. In the article "Music and the Mind: Music’s

Healing Powers" written by Carolyn S. Ticker in 2017, music is powerful, and it

can have healing affects and make you smarter. "Brain plasticity" is the

foundation of all brain function and music has incomparable benefits in

promoting its function. Music has physical benefits which can be found "in

heart rate, respiration, skin temperature, skin conductance, and hormone

secretion" (Ticker 4). Music is an invaluable part of human existence and it is

unarguably life enhancing. It can bring a person peace and send them to a

positive mind space to help overcome what can feel like a desperate situation.

Every person, no matter their age or brain function benefits from music's

healing, and brain strengthening power.

Later in the year of Malacai's accident, I decided to buy a house and

knew that my time in the magical, musical Hillcrest house was coming to an

end. My housemates and I decided to throw one last enormous house show
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and we knew the show would be for Malacai. We threw a "Love for Malacai"

show where we raised $800 for his wheelchair and showed his mom how much

we all still loved him. All the bands he had played in through the years

reunited for him to hear, and all the local musicians he loved and respected

played for him too. The music played all night I think the show played from

5pm-4am. It was the first and only time the police were called because of the

noise, but they were touched by our cause and told us to stay in the back and

be a bit quieter and we did.

It was so wonderful to celebrate this human, my friend, for who he had

been, and to celebrate that he was still able to share good times and music

with us. It has been four years since his accident and two more benefit shows

have been thrown to raise money for treatments and he has improved. He can

now speak a few words, which helps his family care for him better, and he can

wrap his arms around his mom for much needed hugs. I don't see him, or

many of those old housemates very often now, but those times of my life will

always be special to me and remembered for the freedom and youthfulness it

gave me.

I would like to end this story with a poem written by my beautiful, loving,

talented friend Alli King for our friend Malacai;

Dear Malacai,
On that night,
about a year ago
when your head hit the pavement
and opened up, you spilled out
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and I am not religious,

but a miracle shone a blinding light right out of that wound.
You turned your loved ones inside out,
and it is just like you
to break our hearts just to shake us all awake
and remind us that we are alive
and every fucking day is precious.
There is absolutely no telling what happens next.
The road ahead is invisible,
yet I know absolutely
that I want to do everything I can to help you.
I could not live with myself if I did not
because that is what friends are for.
You would do the same for me.
I would bring you back just to break my heart a thousand times again.
I know you can feel my touch.
I know you can hear my voice.
I know you know I am in pain,
but do not feel remorse for me, my friend
because I have nothing but gratitude for you
and the way you live-
so fully, not taking any moment for granted-
not afraid to live or to die.
We all knew something like this was bound to happen.
I woke up this morning in tears of awe
at dawn, in the land of the big sky
where you got lost
and fell in love
and made another life.
I know it haunted you that you could never figure out how to be a dad
(you did what your dad taught you),
but I hope you can be forgiven,
and forgive yourself.
You would make things different if you could;
I would help you,
and I know some others who would help you, too.
That is all for now.
I can almost hear your beautiful mandolin.
So many thanks for everything you are,
Love,
Your friend,
Alli
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Work Cited

Caroilyn S., Ticker. "Music and the Mind: Music's Healing Powers." Musical

Offerings, Vol 8, Iss 1, Pp 1-12 (2017), no. 1, 2017, p. 1. EBSCOhost,

doi:10.15385/jmo.2017.8.1.1.

King, Alli. "Untitled." 24 January 2015.

Park, Soohyun, et al. "Effect of Preferred Music on Agitation After Traumatic

Brain Injury." Western Journal of Nursing Research, vol. 38, no. 4, Apr.

2016, pp. 394-410. EBSCOhost, doi:10.1177/0193945915593180