I am anticipating a family event later this summer and purchased a couple battery powered amplifiers for the venue.  One of the attractions of these was the presence of Bluetooth.  The plan is to sync the phone and play music for the crowd present.  That is the concept.  It does need to be tested.  I charged the battery, managed to sink the unit with my phone, then looked up YouTube on my phone as I had no saved music there.  While I was trying to think of some music group to use for testing, the name Merle Womach  came to mind.  I had seen Mr. Womach in concert back when I was in high school.  The man had an incredible voice.  If memory serves me, he had about a four octave range.  During the concert, he talked about the airplane crash that burned him and left him with all that scarring that you see in the pictures.  Amazingly, his voice was untouched. I decided to play the song “Happy again” which happened to be the first to show up on the potential list.  It’s quite a pleasant song as you listen to it and the message seems, may I say, a little simplistic.  I was walking around messing with the amplifier settings well the song was playing.  So it wasn’t until little bit later that I started taking a little time to watch the video that accompanied the music.

Seeing injured men in an old-time hospital ward didn’t seem to troubling at the time.   Actually, it sort of fit.  I noticed that the video did not accent Mr. Womach’s face.  Back when I heard him in concert, he mentioned awaiting to more eye surgeries. I sufficed myself on the set up of the amplifiers, then once satisfied there, started looking underneath the video at the comments to the same.  Many of those comments were absolutely brutal.  Me being me, had to contemplate the mindset that would place the comments like I observed.  What I have considered, is that song needs to be taken in context with the character singing.

Consider “I’ve been happy before, I’ll be happy again” sung by the likes of Miley Cyrus.  The last picture I saw of her begs application of eye bleach.  The message of the song, especially in this case, needs to come in coordination with the individual delivering it.  Mr. Womach had been through incredible pain and rebuilding of his face.  During the concert, he talked about being in a vision where he he went down a hillside towards a river.  A man was waiting there with a boat.  The man asked him whether he was ready to cross the river.  He informed the man not now, he still had work to do.  That’s when he came out of a coma.

The impact of the song is not because the words are anything spectacular, but because of the history of the one singing them.  That’s why having him sing those words in the presence of patients in the midst of treatment makes sense.  This is not a song for people without issues.  It is an encouraging word that there is a light at the end of the tunnel from somebody who has been through a tunnel.

As a musician, there is a difference in getting a complement from Joe 8-track versus a first chair cellist.  As a patient, there is a difference in hearing a canned response versus hope from a survivor.  I am a nurse.  I started nursing in an oncology ward.  I have it ministered pain meds and spoken with patients during many of our planet’s revolutions around the sun.  However, certain things can only be best appreciated by experience.  I assure you that this past year has given me the incredible appreciation for patients with chronic pain.  There is a constant level of apprehension whether, for example, pushing on the wall mounted soap dispenser will hurt too much.  Should I turn the doorknob with my other hand?  Shaking hands with the patient post office visit is an almost dreaded experience because you never know if you have a simple goodbye or you’ll have an aggressive handshaker that leaves you feeling like knives going down the arm for the next hour.  This last year given the experience that has changed my impressions from that which I previously read or spoken, to a different part of my psyche.

Back to the commenters: I’m left with the impression that they fall into one of two camps. The initial would be those who have had no experience. It’s commenting without life’s education.  The second group would be those who do have problems and are so cynical they can no longer hear any end to them.  I would not surmise which camp would reply in which fashion, just admit that’s my interpretation of their comments.