Musings by OZ

During the last few months of my chemotherapy treatment and the many months that followed I had severe brain fog. My concentration, vision and short term memory were extremely affected by the chemo drugs. I found that I was unable to watch TV because I couldn’t concentrate enough to understand the context of what I was watching. When I attempted to read, my vision was often so distorted that I couldn’t read the words. My vision issues would come and go unpredictably but even when I was able to read I found that I would read a page and by the time I had finished it I had no recollection of what I had read. I was really sad about this because the one thing that I had planned on doing during those six months was to read. I had a big stack of books prepared and I intended on reading each and every one of them, but to no avail, it just wasn’t possible.

Not having the mental capacity for reading or TV I turned to music, the one source of entertainment that has never let me down. I have been a woodworker for over 30 years and have built everything from kitchens to custom furniture and musical instruments. A few years before I was diagnosed I was building speakers for a company in Santa Fe New Mexico. I ended up parting ways with that company and started a new one with a gentleman from Poland.  We opened up a speaker production shop in Gardena California where we continue to build amazing speakers today. We not only build speakers we are also the U.S. distributer for one of the worlds best Japanese Tube Amps. Each year our company exhibits at multiple Hi-End Audio Shows in both the U.S. and Europe and at each of these shows we set up an audio system. Each system uses a pair of our latest speakers combined with three tube amplifiers, a main amp, pre amp and a phono amp. We usually have two sources for our system, digital and analog. For our analog source we have a couple of different turntables that we use and for our digital source we connect a laptop computer that is full of music to a DAC, Digital Analog Converter and we also use what is called a media transport for playing CD’s.

At the time of my treatment we lived in Marina Del Rey California and our apartment was also a private listening studio, this studio was set up with at least one complete show system at all times. In this listening studio we would invite clients or potential clients to spend an afternoon or evening listening to music.

During treatment I had arguably one of the best sound systems in Los Angeles set up in our apartment, I was one lucky cancer patient. In fact I would venture to guess that very few people in the world have had access to such an amazing sound system to listen to while going through chemotherapy treatment. During the six months of treatment I actually had a couple of different world class systems set up in our apartment studio.  I was able to enjoy music for hours and hours each and every day.

When I was feeling my worst I would listen to digital files, I could curl up in bed or on the couch and use my iPad to control the music. I had a hard drive that had hundreds of albums of all different genres of music, I would pick an album that suited my mood and close my eyes and lose myself in the music.

I am an analog guy, I typically prefer to listen to records, there is just something very authentic and magical in the sound of a record. I know its not magic, its transducers, components that convert electrical energy into mechanical energy. The mechanical energy is amplified and sent to the driver. The driver or speaker is just another transducer that converts the electrical energy into sound waves. In a stereo record groove the right channel is recorded on the right wall and the left channel is recorded on the left wall of the groove. In theory it is simple, you drop the needle or stylus into the groove of the record and boom you get music. Like I said, magic!

I played records most of the time because I would have to be engaged to do so, I had to get up and flip the record, it forced me to get up off of the couch. For six months I listened to music as my full time job and it saved my sanity. Music had always been in my life and I have always appreciated it but I realize now that I was mostly distracted when listening. I would often listen to music not as a focal point but as a distraction, a soundtrack or in the background.

During chemo I was listening for 8 or more hours a day. While recovering from the treatment I was in the most undistracted state I had ever been in, it was just me and the musicians. I was amazed at the clarity that I heard, amazed at the connection that I had with the musicians. I gave myself completely to the music, no distractions. This wasn’t just listening to music this was music meditation, critical listening. I listened to albums that I have heard dozens if not hundreds of times in my life and in this undistracted and meditative state of listening it was as if this was the first time I had truly heard the music.

The combination of the amazing sound system and the meditative state that I was in while listening opened up a whole new world of music to me. I could close my eyes and see every musician on the stage and pinpoint the exact spot where that instrument was being played. I was no longer sitting in front of the speaker I was in the audience, I was at the concert, I wasn’t listening to the music, I was the music.

I listened to rock, Jazz, reggae and classical, all genres of music. Music that I had heard many times before without any reaction now made me cry with happiness. I spent my days lost in music. I honestly believe that music helped me heal, music was my medicine. I was lucky to have a nice sound system but when it comes down to it any music source would have benefitted me, on my worst days when I couldn’t leave the bed I would just put on headphones and stream music from the internet.

Music made my days bearable.

I thought that for half a year chemo would be my life but I was mistaken, for the time that I was on chemo music was not just my life but my medicine.

Music helped me heal.