Florida State University Libraries Electronic Theses, Treatises and Dissertations The Graduate School 2014 Music, Dementia, and the Reality of Being Yourself Kayleen M. Justus Follow this and additional works at the FSU Digital Library. For more information, please contact [email protected] FLORIDA STATE UNIVERSITY COLLEGE OF MUSIC MUSIC, DEMENTIA, AND THE REALITY OF BEING YOURSELF By KAYLEEN M. JUSTUS A Dissertation submitted to the College of Music in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Degree Awarded: Spring Semester, 2014 Kayleen M. Justus defended this dissertation on on April 28th, 2014. The members of the supervisory committee were: Frank Gunderson Professor Directing Dissertation Alice-Ann Darrow University Representative Michael B. Bakan Committee Member Charles E. Brewer Committee Member The Graduate School has verified and approved the above-named committee members, and certifies that the dissertation has been approved in accordance with university requirements. ii ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I would like to thank the clients, administrators, staff, and fellow volunteers at the Alzheimer’s Project Tallahassee, Inc., who demonstrate beautifully, and in so many profound ways, what Selflessness actually means. I feel fortunate to have spent so many Fridays singing, playing bingo, sharing memories, laughing, and working together. I would also like to thank my advisor, Frank Gunderson, who has supported my inclination to think differently by preferring not to counter my intuition and curiosity as a scholar. By mentoring me via a “politics of subtraction” in this way, he effectively opened up a space in which I could imagine and construct this project. I am also grateful to the members of my committee, Michael Bakan, Charles Brewer, and Alice-Ann Darrow, for their input and support in this project. Thank you to my friends, colleagues, and classmates at Florida State University, who’ve shown an active interest in my topic. I’ve been both encouraged and challenged to make this work meaningful, practical, and understandable as a result of our various discussions. To my family, for their unconditional support of my intellectual goals. They accept without reservation that pursuing this work limits the amount of time we spend together and they understand that this separateness affords me both freedom and courage to see where this will lead. I am deeply grateful for their love. iii TABLE OF CONTENTS List of Figures ................................................................................................................................vi Abstract .........................................................................................................................................vii PRELUDE: PATRICIA ................................................................................................................... 1 1. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................4 1.1 Purpose: Materializing a Parallax View of the Self via Music and Dementia............... 4 1.2 Significance ..................................................................................................................7 1.2.1 Consciousness, Subjectivity and the Self: Dementia as Loss and Music as Expression .....................................................................................................................8 1.3 The Anti-Method.......................................................................................................... 11 1.3.1 Asserting the Parallax Gap ..............................................................................12 1.3.2 Thinking Like a Materialist ............................................................................12 1.4 The Imaginary, the Symbolic, and the Real: Coordinating the Dialectic ....................16 1.5 The Structure of the Content ....................................................................................... 17 INTERLUDE: ROSIE AND GINNY............................................................................................ 19 2. DEMENTIA AS A SYMBOLIC ORDER............................................................................. 28 2.1 Self as an Ideological Construct ..................................................................................28 2.2 Dementia and Alzheimer’s disease .............................................................................32 2.3 Beliefs about Dementia and Subjectivity ...................................................................35 2.4 Dementia, the Symbolic Order, and the (Big) Other ..................................................42 INTERLUDE: WOODY ............................................................................................................... 45 3. MUSIC AND THE IMAGINARY ........................................................................................56 3.1 Music and Images of (Self-)Consciousness ................................................................60 3.1.1 Music and Embodied Consciousness ..............................................................61 3.1.2 Music and Emergent Consciousness ...............................................................72 3.2 Musical Activity and the Ambiguity of Consciousness ..............................................79 iv INTERLUDE: GEORGE .............................................................................................................. 82 4. SELF: THE REALITY OF THE VIRTUAL ............................................................................88 4.1 The Real as Virtual: The Parallax Gap ........................................................................90 4.1.1 Dementia: Symbolic Virtuality and the Imaginary Real ................................. 92 4.1.2 Music: Imaginary Virtuality and the Symbolic Real ......................................96 4.2 The Real Real .............................................................................................................. 99 4.2.1 A Double Illusion ............................................................................................ 99 4.2.2 Drive .............................................................................................................102 INTERLUDE: HAL .................................................................................................................... 104 5. SO WHAT? .............................................................................................................................114 5.1 Freedom, Drive and E(motion): The Self as its own Short Circuit ..........................116 5.2 Prelude to a Critique of Ideology: Music, Therapy, and Just Being A Self ..............123 5.3 The Critique: Which “Self” is “the Self”? ................................................................135 CODA: CLIFF ............................................................................................................................142 CONCLUSION: A POLITICS OF SUBTRACTION ................................................................154 APPENDICES ............................................................................................................................157 A. ADDITIONAL FIELDWORK NARRATIVES......................................................... 157 B. INTERVIEW TRANSCRIPTS ..................................................................................196 C. HUMAN SUBJECTS COMMITTEE APPROVAL ..................................................224 D. CONSENT FORMS AND INTERVIEW QUESTIONS...........................................227 E. PERMISSION LETTER AND FAIR USE DOCUMENTATION.............................233 REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................248 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .......................................................................................................255 v LIST OF FIGURES Figure 1: Diagnostic Criteria for Dementia of the Alzheimer’s Type ............................................33 Figure 2: “Woody’s Portrait” .........................................................................................................45 Figure 3: “Whistling in the Parlor with Kathy” .............................................................................48 Figure 4: “I don’t know what we’re doing here”........................................................................... 51 Figure 5: “Wanna sing ‘Shooby Doin’?”....................................................................................... 52 Figure 6: “Woody Takes the Lead”................................................................................................ 53 Figure 7: Selfie taken by astronaut Aki Hoshide at the International Space Station in December 2012 (AP/NASA)........................................................................................................................... 56 Figure 8: Screenshot of selfie taken by author, 4 January 2014.................................................... 57 Figure 9: “Möbius (Moebius) Strip”.............................................................................................. 89 Figure 10: “Hal’s Eye”................................................................................................................. 104 Figure 11: “Nice Rendering”....................................................................................................... 107