My friend Shane, and his friend Shane, and their friend Amadine have a podcast called ‘Music & The Mind’ which deals with the importance of music to us emotionally and psychologically through different stages and events in our lives. Shane Mitchell is a music composer, producer and accordionist with Dervish, Amadine produces the podcast and Shane Martin is a renowned psychologist, a great friend, and a very naughty boy.
The series episodes are nice warm chats with experts in different fields. My favourite episodes so far have been one on music therapy with Paul Noonan from Bell X1, and an episode recently with actor Adrian Dunbar. But my favourite has been the one on bereavement which featured a father and daughter team of undertakers which was just absolutely gorgeous. There is a link at the bottom in the P.S.ssss
In this week’s episode they are talking about Music and Resilience with a lovely lady , Dr.Katie Fitzpatrick on how music can alleviate pain. They had 10 minutes of tape left so then they interviewed me. I had a whale of a time !
It is very weird hearing your own voice.
It is also weird to hear yourself talk about things that you may not have said out loud before, except for the circumstance of being interviewed by two guys called Shane….
Here’s a transcript.
Amadine – And now Shane Martin and Shane Mitchell speak to Paul Bond about the role of music during his cancer journey.
Shane Martin – About 2 years ago you got very bad news about your health and I wanted you to talk to us about , you know, what led to the diagnosis and how things have been since ?
Me ( Paul ) – Just over 2 years ago it was as mundane a thing as noticing a different colour in my urine and then ignoring it for a couple of weeks , sure that it would sort itself out, and it didn’t. Saw my GP, was told not to be alarmed that it was probably something routine but sent me for some checks. Anyway, it transpired that I had a tumour in my bladder, my first consultant , he operated on it, and then when I went back to him he said that it was much more serious than he’d first thought and that he was referring me on to another consultant and that ultimately it would mean the removal of my bladder. I saw the new consultant in Beaumont hospital and I was under her care , put on chemotherapy for 16 weeks and then she operated on me and it ended up with her removing my left kidney, prostate, bladder and some lymph nodes. So it was all done and dusted in about 10 months from beginning to end. And here we are now.
Shane Martin – And what kind of impact did all of that have on you ?
Me – It’s hard to say. The lowest point was probably coming out from seeing the first consultant after having had the first operation and he’d tried to remove the tumour, and there were still a lot of Covid restrictions ongoing then and Eileen, my wife, wasn’t allowed into that consultation so I had to go back out the car park and sit in the car and tell her that I was going to lose my bladder. Everything after that we just seemed to cope with…and you are busy coping , you don’t have time to think any deeper, or at great length about anything, I found, because you’re so busy with appointments , coping with, you know , when I was on the chemo treatment I was up in Beaumont every Wednesday on IV drips, three Wednesdays in a row, a week off , and then repeat that process 4 times. So, immediately after the Wednesday you’d have injections at home that Eileen had to administer, you’d steroids , different things, so you had no routine in anything at all , you were watching old movies at 2 in the morning and then falling asleep at 11 during the day and it was a busy time, you were on a rollercoaster, you just went with it.
Shane Mitchell ( the nice one ) -You’ve told us that music played a big role in your recovery ?
Me – Music has always been important to me , always sort of there in the background as a sort of soundtrack to my life, much in the same way it is in everybody else’s. But especially during the chemo treatments, and on those Wednesdays when I could be in Beaumont for over 8 hours , I would read a book and have headphones on. These days you probably don’t get times like that to just sit and read and properly listen to music without any distractions, so music certainly became a bigger part of my life then and songs , some old songs, a lot of new songs just seemed to be so in tune with what I was thinking, so it was quite magical in that regard.
Shane Mitchell ( the nice one ) – Can you share any particular moments Paul , instances where you can remember in particular an artist, a genre, or any particular moment where you felt this is playing a significant role in you coping with your healing process ?
Me – I’d always liked the band Radiohead, I’d seen them live a few times, and just around the time that I started my treatment two of the members of the band, Thom Yorke and Jonny Greenwood had set up a new band, apparently they’d started during Covid called The Smile. I came across a song that they had just released called ‘Free In The Knowledge’ , which apparently they wrote about their own experiences being separated during Covid , and the line “Free in the knowledge that this will one day end “, I was listening to it and I thought , ‘Oh my God !’ , they wrote that just for me!
And then again while having chemo one day I heard Tom Odell, whom I’d always been quite fond of , he had a song called ‘Best Day Of My Life’, and I was sitting there with an IV drip in my arm and I looked around at all of these people running around trying to help me and I thought , ‘You know this probably is the best day of my life’. I’m getting Star Trek treatment here , sitting reading a good book, listening to cool music, they sang my thoughts, that’s how it seemed to me.
Shane Mitchel ( the nice one ) – So , it was more the lyrics of these songs were connecting with you rather than the music elements ?
Me – To a large extent , yes, that would be fair to say , but I don’t think if I’d read them as poetry that they would have had quite the same effect, and the other thing of having time on my hands is I got back in the habit of listening to complete albums in the order that the band had wanted them played.
Shane Martin – Cancer treatment is exhausting emotionally and physically and it’s hard to stay positive. Were there certain songs that could change your mood in the right sense.
Me- Definitely, definitely. I had a friend in Dublin and he randomly asked me, well I thought it was randomly, he asked me what 6 songs made me happy, but in the background, what I didn’t realise was that he was creating a painting while listening to those songs. I blogged about that and started a playlist with the songs on Spotify called ‘Happiness’ and lots of people sent me songs to add to that playlist, a lot of which were terrible and I’d never listen to again, but it was nice that they thought it would help. Yeah, the ones I picked were obviously the best , and they’re the first seven if you ever do click on it. I don’t think I got downhearted at any time during the whole thing and definitely music helped me to be much more positive than I probably would have been in my own right. At one point someone asked Eileen ‘How’s Paul coping with it ?’ and she said he’s very positive and they said ‘Oh, that’s good.’ And Eileen said, ‘No, it he was any more positive he’d actually be recommending it to people.’
Shane Mitchell ( the nice one ) – And did you find yourself avoiding any songs in case they’d bring you down rather than up ? I mean music can have different effects on people, were you kind of handpicking what you listened to ? And were you careful about those songs that were being sent to you that they weren’t going to bring you in a different direction with your mood ?
Me – No, I think that’s one of the other wonderful things about music , if it was all just happy clappy, I don’t think we’d listen to them after 2 or 3 days. I enjoy the emotions. Certainly the Nick Cave album, Ghosteen, he wrote that album after the death of his son, so there’s a lot of melancholy in there, but it’s a very gentle melancholy which I went with as I listened to it. No, I wouldn’t go out of my way to avoid songs.
Shane Martin – Like, it’s behind you now, you know, its something that you look back on, that dark chapter in your life. If there had been no music , or if you had been barred from listening to music do you think it would have been so much harder to cope ?
Me – The type of cancer I have, it will come back, so I go 6 months to 6 months, CT scans, bloods, x-rays , different tests to get a clean bill of health for the next 6 months , or to catch it early when it does come back. So you’re never completely out of the woods. And I genuinely don’t look back on it as a dark period and maybe music was a large part in that it wasn’t dark, for me. I would play music all the time travelling up to my treatments, when I’d be in the hospital, different nurses and doctors would ask what I was listening to and you’d chat about concerts you were at , I always wore band tee shirts when I went and different people would ask who or what band they were. Because I talked about it and posted photos of all of that , people bought me tickets to gigs, people sent me albums, sent me tee shirts, sent me songs that meant a lot to them. Obviously I wouldn’t have picked, or chosen to have cancer but I would not look back on that time as a dark time.
I had so many people rooting for me. I counted one day while I was sitting there having chemo, from going in that day, the lady on reception, the people that brought me tea, took bloods, checked on me, I think I had interactions with something like 28 people that day who were all asking about me or caring for my welfare…I was just blown away by all of that.
Shane Mitchell ( the nice one ) – Well I feel that your story Paul is a very positive one and that you’re painting a very positive picture and someone listening will get inspired if they’re in a similar situation.
Thank you very much for coming on.
And that was the end of my small contribution to a rather wonderful series by two Shanes and an Amadine.
We recorded our chat a few months ago and Amadine edited it , polished it, and cut out all the times Shane Martin was mean to me during it, and it was released yesterday.
Shane rang me a few hours after it was out to see if I’d heard it, I had, probably within seconds of it going live, and to thank me for taking part. We’ve known each other a long time. We chatted about other things, health, his and mine, our kids, our Soulmates, Sligo’s prospects in the league this season, and , the way good friends’ chats sometimes do, wound our way to chatting about becoming millionaires.
We both thought many years ago that we’d be millionaires by now.
Shane said he’d found in latter years that he had the luxury of turning down speaking engagements if he’d had a few good corporate gigs to tide him over, and that this allowed him time at home to think, or simply potter about. I got what he was saying, and I said, maybe that’s what our olden days notion of what being a millionaire actually meant.
If I was a millionaire I’d host dinners at home where we’d drink lots of nice wine and chat with friends who were our guests late into the night. I’d get up late. I would meet friends for coffee for no reason, and for important reasons. I would write about Giants, and a girl called Jonny. I would go for runs in the style of Waldo Emerson :
“ Few people know how to take a run. The qualifications are endurance, plain clothes, old shoes, an eye for nature, good humour, vast curiosity, good speech, good silence and nothing too much.”
I would visit old friends and listen to stories I’ve heard before, but enjoy the retelling. I would read. I would listen to great music. On a whim I’d take my Soulmate to Galway for the day, jump in the sea, and visit a wonderfully weird exhibition or two. I would spend time with family.
And that’s how I spent last week.
Maybe I am a millionaire already ? Eileen will be thrilled !
Shane said that one of the nicest things that ever happened him was after he’d given a talk recently a lady handed him an envelope at the end. He was in a rush to say goodbye and get on the road back to Sligo, so it was only as he was leaving the car park that he took it out of his pocket. It was an old empty envelope on which she’d written “Your talk tonight has changed my life.”
How many millionaires get that ?
Toodles,
Paul
P.S. This song is in my head since our Robyn sent it to me, Lola Young’s ‘Messy’, enjoy !
P.P.S. And this is a link to the Music and The Mind series on Spotify, but it’s available in other magical places too.
P.P.P.S And this is a link to the ‘Happiness – Take 56’ playlist
