"Close your eyes, and smile a little longer."
In his song “Dementia/Blue” Scott Garred composes a serenade to the warm smoke of withering dreams and failing memories. When one suffers from dementia, they slowly lose cognition, cohesion, and memory. Scott’s song delivers a catharsis onto the process of watching a loved one slowly mentally decay. About a year ago, I had my grandfather pass away from Alzheimers. As his disease progressed, I watched his layers slowly peel back, decompose, and settle. It was a sense witnessing a slow death while he was still alive. In a way, the disease gave me time to cope with his upcoming death while he was still living and with me, as I could still hug, embrace him, and say year-long goodbyes. “Dementia/Blue” captures this in song. When he’s not recording his own music, Garred works as a music therapist. Garred’s career clearly influences his writing style, “Dementia/Blue” is a direct reflection of this.
The song’s acoustic fingerpicking, harmonies, piano, and Garred’s reassuring voice capture a gentle feeling of watching the seasons slowly change and bodies slowly, bittersweetly, and gracefully age. Garred’s song manages to sing sweetly to the humanly frontier of death as simply a backdrop to the joys of life. Research into Alzheimers and dementia has found that the part of the brain that processes music is consistently the least affected part of the brain by degenerative diseases, it is easy to imagine this song as a way to show an emotion of peace to someone who can hear it no other way. The song settles and swells to the feeling of a slow, emotional feather dropping in the wind. Listen to this song to try and find a sense of perspective, peace, and calming, human reassurance.
Garred writes that in his intentions for the song was a comparison between the effects of climate change and dementia, within it he captures an experiential universality of the slow passing of the inevitable.
"Close your eyes, and smile a little longer."
"Lose yourself today, lose yourself
Surrender anyway
Think of the blue sky and dream."
Lose yourself
Today
Lose yourself
Surrender anyway
Think of the blue sky
And dream
You can learn more about Scott Garred here:
About the Curator - Sean Arison
Sean is a musician, writer, and artist currently studying psychology near Los Angeles, California. He really enjoys nice smelling fauna and homely ambient lighting. After exclusively listening to the Beatles, Beethoven, and Pink Floyd until the age of fourteen, he now possesses a wide music taste and loves discovering and sharing the beautiful art that he comes across. Sean loves how music is able to indefinably connect to the individual on such a unique and personal level. Sean is currently working on releasing his first full-length album in the near future. To know more, connect with Sean on Instagram!
