Minamisoma Hospital (March 2012)

photo by Eloise Campbell, www.campbellpicks.com 

I always liked hospitals. In a very peculiar way I always saw them as a place of creativity, where artists dressed in white robes take superhuman roles and determine people’s lives. As I stepped in the lobby of the Minami-soma Hospital I felt a shameful euphoria, that I am entering an important place, where I too could do something important, by playing music for doctors and patients, like communicating directly with semi-god artists and their muses.

Minami-soma is a town that would never appear on any guide book or travel article, it is as common as any town in provincial Japan. In this town now, words like radiation, nuclear energy, exclusion zone, evacuation are side by side sharing a bench with quiet, simple and normal. The hospital I am visiting this morning is the front line for measuring the effects of radiation on human beings, and its doorstep is only a short walk from the gates of the 30 km exclusion zone, an area declared uninhabitable for the next generation.

Normality is the mind’s opium, and in places like this the images get filtered to find what provides the necessary drug dosage to the brain. A well lit entrance. A reception. A waiting area with chairs. A very welcoming doctor. Introductions and words of gratitude. A stage, improvised in one of the corners. A gathering of an audience. I am not ashamed anymore for my euphoria, I am excited, there is an audience, there is a piano, this is a chance for my creation to be heard, I can be closer to the semi-gods and the people whose lives they determine.

As the first notes of Handel’s Harmonious Blacksmith start bouncing off the walls of this unique platform, my ears start to catch the noise of a conversation, outside of the environment of the musical performance, a quick speech, an argument perhaps. As I am playing the first page, I wait for a phrase where I can comfortably lift my eyes from the keys and look in the distance. I see a man standing in front of the pharmacy and talking lively with another man behind the counter. The opium in the mind seeking for normality starts to fade and the other senses start to come back.  I smell the cocktail of immaculate cleanliness and expensive medicine, I sense the silent walk of health workers on soft shoes antagonising the shameless rolling vibration of a pushed occupied bed. Addressing the audience, as soon as the first musical work is over, my heart opens and I taste the sadness, the fear, the loneliness that is enclosed in the walls of my concert hall this morning. I am in a hospital, there is no doubt about it, and my audience is people in pain.

It is hard to measure an audience reaction when it is made of people in illness. My forged euphoria is shattered in little pieces and is lost between the powers of the disinfectant and medicines. I try looking at the face of each member of the audience, some sitting in the improvised row of chairs, most of them listening actively, visiting families perhaps, I thought, strong enough to choose their own seat in the improvised hospital concert hall. A few are sitting at the very edge of the chair, rolled up almost on one side, with a fixed smile of politeness, but clearly in some kind of pain or uncomfortable state. There are others in pyjamas, surrounding the area of the music, some attached to a dropper tube, some in wheel chairs, some holding on to arms of carers. One lady wearing a light green surgical gown keeps her eyes on the floor with a calm face all throughout the music. A gentleman is leaning against the wall with his eyes closed, arms tightly clasped around his stomach, which stay there even through the applause.

As the music is coming to a close I am feeling panic. My opium has completely ran out. Looking at people’s faces, trying to connect with them through the music, with eye contact, with agreeable smiles, I have now become part of the emotions inside these walls, the medical canvas where lives are decided, the “centre of excellence in measuring radiation on people”, as I was told when I arrived. I felt the sheet of pain covering me, and I gave up the desperate search for enthusiastic applause after each musical conclusion. I finished with “Sakura Sakura”, the Japanese traditional song, arranged for the piano. I bowed modestly, and I quietly thanked the audience, patients and doctors alike, for their time and efforts to be present, for allowing me to share music with them.

As I was walking out an elderly gentleman confined in a wheelchair was brought close to me, so that we could exchange some words.  Automatically almost, I smiled and said “thank you” before I even heard what he was about to say. He whispered to his carer to bring the wheel chair closer so that he can be heard. He opened his mouth to say something, and immediately had to stop, and turned his head away, trying to cover what was obviously a lot of pain. He tried a second time, and his wrinkles highlighting the memories of his long life, turned deeper and darker, as agony took over the logic of his speech. His carer lowered his head, attempting to decipher what the gentleman in the wheel chair was trying to say. The pain became tears, and the tears became a flood of despair and despair became desolate silence. My eyes stayed fixed with the eyes of this kind audience member, trying to receive the strength in his attempts of sharing his feedback. With every breath, with every tear, I was looking further inside to what was the source of this man’s soul. In the end, he turned his face away defeated by his condition. Perhaps in shame, perhaps just giving up, he whispered to himself: “Arigato.”