#13: Wednesdays

On Wednesdays, 8-12 of us gather round, masked, peering through each other’s space between the ear lobe and trapezius, and sit in our assigned spots 6 feet apart along the linoleum. My metal folding chair is located about halfway down the corridor between a resident’s apartment door and the shower room. The wire music stand has seen better days a good couple decades ago. I lost my rockstop yet again and have to stick another hole in my ratty cello backpack strap. Anything to keep from slipping mid sea shanty.

The hallway has surprisingly awesome acoustics, helping my cello sound ring past the North wing. My crew of 8-12 varies depending upon enthusiasm, energy levels, and if those who are bedridden want to listen in too. I make sure to travel down the hall to corral and include as many as possible before I set up, even if it is just to open a door to usher the sound waves in. I almost always begin with Amazing Grace. This is purposeful; start and end with a crowd-pleaser.

I choose music the morning of the Wednesday concert. We have various hymn books laying around the facility and I throw in random lullabies, patriotic diddies, spirituals, old-timey folk tunes, jazz standards, and musical classics (oh, the musicals!). It is always a gamble. The crew’s ages range from Baby Boomers to The Greatest Generation. Some missed whole time capsules of music genres because their parents were barely out of diapers. I make sure to keep a solid selection of tunes that wake up all the vocal chords and slip a few new ones in every week to keep them on their toes. Some weeks I pick better than others. Most wouldn’t tell me straight off but I know them well enough to know when I’ve pleased their punch.

Amazing Grace settles everyone into their respective posts in our hallway church. They know the words even if they can’t speak them. They hum in their heads, or hearts, or through their gap-toothed grins. Sometimes I can even get them to howl or whisper by swaying a little bigger or raising my eyebrows real tall. I have a hard time not crying almost instantly, especially when they start feeling warmed up on the reprise. It is as if even their ghosts quiet down and listen.

After our precious and packed 30 minutes are up I thank each of them for coming in different ways depending on the person: a nod, a hug, a smile, a hand squeeze, folding up their chair and replacing it in a corner, or wheeling them back to their beds for a late afternoon snooze. Little do they know that those 8-12 are the best audience I’ve ever played for in all my years of music making. Little do they know that those 8-12 are the reason I continue through the grief of losing it all and finding something I never knew I had.

Amazing grace, how sweet the sound
That saved a wretch like me
I once was lost, but now I am found
Was blind, but now I see