Back when I lived in Dallas, I became friends with an amazingly brilliant journalist named Lisa McCree. After a few years at World News Now in New York, she moved to California.
This is a story Lisa shared with me about Traumatic Brain Injuries and how soldiers who have suffered them in combat are in therapeutic services, trying tirelessly to regain memory, movement and sensation. I encourage you to take half an hour and watch this.
Anyone reading my blog or coming to my shows knows how I feel about war. I was crying while I watched this piece. I truly pray that we humans can learn to communicate in other ways besides violence. We have so many blessings, and it hurts hurts hurts how many men, women and children are affected by the horrors of war.
John Kelly
says:There was a story about the power of music in memory, especially related to veteran’s war experiences in yesterday’s Washington Post.
You may be interested, but alas, now you have to go through the registration cha-cha-cha:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/21/AR2007012100668.html
Here’s a sample:
Music hooks deep into emotions and memories in ways that words do not; in fact, Sherpe is contributing to a project that aims to get at a history of the Vietnam War through the music of the era. At the University of Wisconsin, scholar Craig Werner and Vietnam vet Doug Bradley have found that music is a highway into veterans’ memories of the war.
“Words are tied up in politics,” said Werner, who is chair of the Afro-American studies department. “When we talk about wars, it becomes an issue of liberal ideology versus conservative ideology, hawks versus doves, you are for it or against it. . . . For the guys who were there, the words don’t fit the complexity of the experience.”
“What music does is reach down into parts of our brain, it opens networks and pathways that you can’t get to via language,” he added.