The tune is the thing

If, like me, you've noticed some short-term memory loss since COVID, don't despair. Constant stress, say researchers, “poisons the brain,” distracts it so it struggles to recall recent events. Factor in old age and the loss is greater, COVID or no.

All of which I've come to accept, but now a discovery, a shaft of sunlight in the dark forest. Among my recent losses are the words to many otherwise well-known songs; ditties I used to sing with the guitar. And what's the discovery? That I still know the tunes.

Tunes, it seems, are among the last things we lose. Not only the notes but the beat as well.

Which calls to mind the time I was visiting my uncle Harold and his wife Kathleen in their Newfoundland kitchen. By then, he was deep in dementia, but, knowing he'd once loved dance music, I asked her if he'd enjoy my playing a harmonica piece. “Oh yes,” she said. Somewhat doubtfully, watching him, I launched into Mussels in the Corner, a onetime favourite local jig. As his face showed no emotion whatsoever, I was about to stop. Then, a few more bars in, his right foot began tapping to the beat.

Recounting this to our eldest son Danny during his recent visit from Manitoba, we somehow got talking about the recent death of Israel's Chaim Topol, the famous Jewish singer/actor who popularized the Harrick/ Jerrold song, If I were a Rich Man from the movie Fiddler on the Roof and later acted for decades in the stage play of the same name. Between Dan and I - he with the words and I with the tune - we soon recovered the whole song, which starts with milkman Tevye declaring:

Oh Lord, you made many, many poor people. I realize, of course, it's no shame to be poor; But it's no great honor either!

So, what would have been so terrible if I had a small fortune?”

Remember? And so deeply satisfying was this that I got out my guitar and, leafing through an old binder, started strumming and humming snatches of other favourites of ours, tunes like Wildwood Flower, Song for the Mira, Will the Circle be Unbroken, Drunken Sailor, Jamaica Farewell, Gotta Travel On, and Lightfoot's Sit Down, Young Stranger.

Of my own favourites - by now I was losing my small audience but couldn't stop - there was Starry, Starry Night (about the painter Vincent van Gogh), Suzanne (which Leonard Cohen made famous), Sonny's Dream, and Some Say Love. At some point, my wife Beth fetched her knee drum to accompany me. But, struggling as I was with unfamiliar minor chords, she had trouble with my erratic beat.

That's when our impromptu party faded for good. A good thing too, for I was about to tackle Ron Hynes's No Change in Me, and who knows what else.

Still, it was fun while it lasted. And from now on, knowing that tunes are rooted deeper in the brain than mere words, I won't be stuck for something fun to do before bed.